The Last of This Year's Stockings

Hooray! I've finally finished the last of the pre-Christmas knitting projects. These two stockings were a bit of a challenge but I'm very happy with how well they turned out. The customer provided me with a stocking that she wanted me to duplicate along with a "pattern" that consisted of about seven handwritten pages of "k 10 red, 3 green, 10 red, 3 green", etc. etc. Fortunately about the same time that I started deconstructing this pattern one of my librarian friends who knows that I knit a lot picked out a book titled "Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines" and sent it home along with my requested titles. This book, among other goodies, contained a link to an online pattern for a knitted Christmas stocking that was popular in 1945. While the stocking was not the same as the one I had to duplicate, two of the graphs used in that stocking were identical to the stockings I needed to make. This saved me a lot of time and effort. Here are both sides of the stockings after I finished them this afternoon:



I called my customer to let her know that they were ready to be picked up, and she informed me that she has two more grandchildren coming in the new year, so she'll be asking me to knit a couple more for next Christmas. Thank goodness I've made really meticulous notes and graphs for the entire pattern. It will make the next pair of stockings go much more quickly.