Christmas Stockings, Christmas Sweater

You've seen both of these before, in quick posts as I was trying to finish. But, now that we have some time, I thought you might want to see the finished products.


First is the Penguin Stocking I made for Aaron. This started out as a basic Christmas stocking (basically a very large sock) from the Canadian Living website. It's all acryllic, so it is easily taken care of and will last a long time.

As I was knitting, I made the decision to duplicate stitch the penguin on after the whole thing was knitted. It seemed easier than working in the round with a bunch of bobbins. Of course, once I started duplicate stitching... Well, you know. That is just the biggest pain in the ass I can readily imagine. I really regretted not knitting the pattern in, I can tell you.

When I had spent 2 days on the head and shoulders of this penguin (which was beginning to look like a black skull at that point), I decided to see if it would be easier quicker less annoying to knit. And it was. I finished the entire penguin applique--making it up as I went along--in about 60 minutes.

And then spent another 30 picking out the duplicate stitches. (Because I'm just not the kind of person who would be satisfied with covering them up with the applique.)

This stocking is Eric's Whimsical Stocking. It's from a Nicky Epstein (love her) pattern which I got (I think) from Ravelry. Done in Grinch Green (haha! Not the real title) I added some I-cord trim. The tree and the star appear on NE's original stocking, but I altered the candy cane. The original was made of two 3-stitch I-cord pieces wrapped around each other, but that looked kind of lumpy when I did it. So I placed the white I-cord and then sewed it to the stocking in an overhand spiral using doubled thread.

Killed 2 birds with one stone, as it was.

I also didn't get a chance to show you this. It's a sweater for GenGen! Look how cute she is! I think this is a LB pattern. (I know, I usually give you links, but I kind of cleaned everything up for Christmas and I have to go dig out the patterns to get that information for you.) I used acryllic yarn (Caron Simply Soft and Highland Thistle in Tweed.)Basically one skein of each made a sweater for my pretty good sized dog.

I worried a little about the closures. The pattern called for velcro closures, but of course that tends to snag. I didn't want to use buttons because I was afraid she would chew them off and choke on them. GenGen tends to be a chewer.

So I opted for some simple frog closures, with bobbles for buttons. I don't know if you can see them here. I put two on the collar and two on the chest. They are soft enough that they don't bother her at all and they blend right into the pattern.

She doesn't really need a sweater, of course, since she has an undercoat and all. But the red looks really good on her and she enjoys the attention of having someone dress her before she goes out.

R's reaction to seeing this was to simply shake his head in disgust.