Stocking Update

Well I'm not much further along in the stocking knitting since my post late Friday night. With a weekend of babysitting I didn't have much time for knitting, let alone complicated knitting with a graph to follow and lots of squares to count - and after our Stitch n' Bitch gathering at my place tonight I don't have much to show either - following a graph pattern is pretty difficult when there is always so much interesting conversation to jump in on!

It was a good gathering though with some delicious snacks as always - chocolate, cheese and wine as well as a lovely garden-fresh tomatoe, cheese and arugula salad and I made an Okanagan fruit buckle with plums (from my boyfriend's parent's orchard), nectarines and apricots using this recipe. There were six of us tonight and the projects varied from felted bags (this is our group's favourite pattern to modify) to afghan squares to baby hats to socks knit with handspun wool to a cool fuzzy hodded wrap/poncho. Knitting night is one of my favourite nights of the week!

So yes, back to the stocking update . . .

I am knitting a stocking for my 2 year-old-niece for Christmas. Last year I finally finished the one I started for her 4 year-old sister (I think I started that one in 2002) and when I gave it to Niece #1 she immediately wondered where the stocking was for Niece #2 - such a nice big sister - and wanted to share hers if there wasn't going to be one for her sister. So, Aunt Brandy is on to knitting family stocking Number 2.

Stockings in our family are very important. My great aunt knit matching stockings for my mom and each of her five siblings and knit one for my dad and my brother and sister and I to match. My mom's stocking was knit with 100% wool while my aunt was living in England and as a result is pretty much its original size. Ours on the other hand was knit with chunkier acrylic and so they are much larger than my mom's (more stocking = more loot!) and have stretched over the years as well (we used to wear them as giant socks when we pulled them out of the Christmas decoration box each year). My mom always went out of her way to make sure Christmas was huge for us kids (sometimes to my dad's chagrin) and the stockings were always full and usually had a giant orange stretching out the toe. Every year the three of us kids would fight over who got to put their stocking on which chair since wherever our stocking sat was where our pile of presents from Santa would sit as well. Stocking location was extremely important since we had two old stove pipe holes that opened up in the living room ceiling, one from the bedroom I shared with my sister and the other in my brother's bedroom. Vying for a spot on the chair under the stove pipe hole meant that you could get a sneak peek at the gifts Santa brought you without having to wait to walk down the stairs with everyone else. I think this may have worked for one year and then after that the stockings were always 'mysteriously' switched and placed on the couch across the room or in an opposite chair - foiled by Santa again!! So Christmas stockings are an important part of our holiday traditions and is especially important now to my sister who absolutely loves the fun of Christmas and now has her own two (soon to be three!) children to share it with.

So what do these much loved stockings look like?

Well here is a shot of mine and the toe of my boyfriend's, (knit by my wonderful aunt!) from last Christmas.

This is the same pattern I'll be knitting for this stocking. I think these stocking patterns are very cute and they are very vintage! They come from the Knit-o-Graf Pattern Co. (check here for some vintage knitwear patterns by this company) and the pattern is by Della Fitch, copyright 1952. Here is a peek at an original pattern image I found on EBay for these stockings.


My sister has the lovely Santa sleigh scene on the top left, my dad, brother and boyfriend all have the Santa one on the top right and Niece #1 has the one on the bottom right (she was the first in the family to get this one I think) and sadly, my brother-in-law has a bastardized puppy dog version (I wish I had had the chance to make him an 'original' pattern before my mom bought that one for him, oh well can't remove it from the tradition now).

I'm using a 3 3/4 mm needle (No.5 US) though the pattern calls for a No. 3 - these were the needles I used last time (if I recall correctly) so though I'd like to knit this one up a bit bigger to match the ones from our generation I have to be careful not to make them different sizes for this generation since equality among all children in the family was also a big 'tradition' at our house. I'm using Smart Superwash 100% wool for the majority of colours and will use one ball of Patons Country Garden DK 'The Claire Murray Collection' for any yellow in the pattern.

So that's it, the stocking update! How are your stockings coming along?

I do have a few other projets on the needles which I'd like to share but I don't have access to a camera right now. My boyfriend just left on his 2nd Navy sailing trip for 6 months (less a week!) and he's the one with the digital camera so I'm stuck here with film which doesn't serve a new blogger very well. In the meantime I'll have to make do with poor photo quality from my webcam to show some basic photos of my projects - either that or I'll just have to invite friends with digital cameras over more often for knitting photo shoots ... hmmmm, any volunteers?