christmas stocking knitting hat

When planning the last of my Christmas shopping this week it suddenly dawned on me that I had not made Elijah’s Christmas stocking yet. It’s tradition around here that everyone has a personalized hand knit stocking. I have made all the ones for the last three children, but the older ones all made their own about 8 years ago as a homeschooling project. I decided to make it a fun thing, well I envisioned it would be fun, don’t know how the ~~victims~~ students interpreted it though. But I digress. Ahem. They all knew the fundamentals of knitting and purling at the time, and the older girls were very proficient and therefore stepped up to help the younger ones, as did I , when they got stuck. Here’s a not so artful, but the best I could get in this house, shot of all their stockings.

So anyway, I hadn’t made Elijah’s yet because last year at Christmas he was only 5 months old and we don’t bother doing stockings for babies. Stocking stuffers in our house are pretty much just their annual Christmas candy binge and babies don’t need candy. Winking smile We don’t keep candy in the house as a rule and so it’s a special treat twice a year, Christmas and Easter, to get candy. We probably won’t fill Elijah’s with more than a few token pieces of candy and maybe a few toddler safe trinkets, but he is old enough that he may notice if he didn’t have one to open on Christmas morning, so the knitting began last night.

I make these based on the dimensions of a basic stocking, and the stitch numbers based on my gauge of 5 stitches to the inch in worsted weight wool. It’s really just a big, fat sock after all, with the cuff taller than the foot length. When you do the toe decreases, just do them on the top and bottom rather than on the sides. I use seed stitch for the cuff but you could also use garter stitch.

I tried to get a picture of Elijah in the Fartlek hat and only managed to keep it on him more than a split second once for this one.