Short of sewing on a few jingle bells and attaching the braided loop for hanging them, the three stockings are finished. In my mind, that is finished but that is part of my problem. They really cannot be mailed until they are finished and that means FINISHED. The most difficult part of getting the pictures was finding the digital camera. This is great material for another post but the briefly, we have not been able to find the camera since Family Weekend at Hampshire, but I had a visual that it was sitting in the bottom of one of my knitting projects. Yes, I searched thorougly through 3 bags, and found it in the fourth. Why do I have 4+ knitting bags with projects you ask? Again, that is another post.
I started these 2 weeks ago from yesterday and have been happily obsessed knitting them for my 3 extended family members who do not yet have them. The picture in the center above is one of mine, SHR and Thomas Henry's THR. Grandma Katie knit mine 53 years ago, and THR's was completed this week. I don't have the original pattern, but I do have 4 pieces of paper that guide me through these stockings; 1) another pattern of hers that has all the correct stitches and shaping, but not this exact design 2) graph paper with the Santa pattern, 3) graph paper with the candy cane pattern 4) another stocking pattern that has the correct alphabet for the initials. I also bring out my original stocking when I am knitting one, to make sure I have the exact number of rows. I want it to be as close to the original as possible.
The picture on the right is a close up of Santa showing the angora yarn for his beard. At times in my life I did not have enough money for angora and substituted a synthetic, but not for these ones.
I promise some day to write this pattern down for the next knitter in our family who hopefully in 53 more years will be making one of these for the newest member of the family either by birth, acquaintance or marriage.
I have knit a few stockings using another pattern; Rod's is a Candide pattern with different Christmas patterns, but most of the rest of them are Grandma Katie's pattern because when you have perfection why change it.
So now that I am on a roll, I have one last stocking to finish before Christmas. . . .
