Sockings and lace

Hello again!  I'm back on track and posting once a week, which is awesome as I'm finishing so many things!  As promised, this week we'll be taking a look at some cute Christmas decorations I've been making, as well as another square on my throw.

As you may guess from the title of this post, I've been making some Christmas stockings this week.  The pattern is by Amanda Berry, and is available for free online here.

So far, I've made two - both with the moss stitch top in white.  One is red, the other red and green stripes:

Its a lovely little pattern, and very easy to adapt to what odd bits of wool you have.  I used Stylecraft Special DK, which I got in a pack of five (two red, two green and a white - aimed at Christmas knitting!) for around £8.  This was nice to knit with, and has a very Christmassy feel to the colours.  Plus there is great stitch definition.

Each stocking took just over an hour to make - great if you want an on the go project (and great for me and my short attention span).  I'm thinking of putting some small chocolates in them for the tree, so visitors will be able to help themselves to one, or stringing 24 of them together to make an advent calendar....  The ideas are endless, unlike time!  I'm definitely going to be making more before Christmas, maybe playing around with the basic pattern...  Watch this blog and we'll see if I get round to it!!

So the lace part of this blog post is the latest square I've made for my throw.  I'm not exactly much of a lace knitter - it goes wrong far too many times! - but I thought I'd have a go with a simple diamond pattern I found online.  Here's the finished square:

It did take a couple of attempts (on my first, something went wrong early on and it just didn't line up).  Lace knitting is something that I always thinks looks so complicated (and if it goes wrong, working out what went wrong and unpicking can both be!) however this was actually fairly straightforward.  It probably helps that its not in lace weight yarn, but double knitting.

Anyway, next time I'll hopefully have finished some rather unusual baubles I'm working on, and maybe a square or two for my throw.  Until next time, have a good week!