Fiber Monday - Stocking Suffer (lol)

 

In Which I Make A Biiiiiiiig Sockbag

Y'know, when you think about it, a Christmas stocking really is just a big ol' sockbag that you cram full of cool stuff...

(This is gonna be a bit of a story time, kids, so if you just wanna skip down to the pics of what I'm working on first before you get the context, I'd understand ;) )

So my family has always had some really clever, crafty ladies in it. My dad's mom knits, his aunt crochets (though I did not learn crochet from her), my mom's mom knits, and I'm about 75% sure they allllll sewed. I'm pretty sure I wore a lot of clothes made by relatives, growing up.

My grandmother, until recently, has made everyone's stockings. Mine was a pretty white one with an angel on it. Around the time my younger sibling was born, however, the stockings went from normal-sized to... giant. Seriously, they went from "this Pringles can dominates the stocking" sized to "I dunno I put the American Girl doll in here and I think her horse could fit, too" sized. Now, I'm the middle child of one of my Grandmother's younger kids, and I'm in my early 30s, so as you may be able to guess, my Grandmother is getting up there in years and she's quickly become overwhelmed with how darn many of us grandkids and great grandkids there are.

So some of my young niblings are lacking in gargantuan crazy stockings.

This is sad, so me, being very interested in making things and wanting to prove to myself that I can make things, I volunteered to make one. For reference, the, uh, shaft? of the last Big Ol Festive Sockbag was about 7.5 inches (19 cm) across and as long as my arm, not counting the foot, so you may be asking yourself....

IS THIS BLOGGER NUTS?

Yes. Yes I am.

But I have a ton of blue and white yarn left over, and I found a cute pattern for a reindeer head (which... I might use a crazy color for instead of going with the brown I'd originally though I'd do... maybe red & green?) and some snowflakes, and I've already graphed out how to crochet the kiddo's name near the top, so why not? I can do this!

Especially since I'm not using a set of probably 3mm needles.

I'm using a 6.5mm K hook on Medium/4/Worsted weight yarn (Red Heart Super Save, mostly). Currently it's 54 stitches around (because the deer head is an odd number of stitches across, so that's 27 stitches per side) and about... 42 rounds long (the first pic is at only about 18 rounds). I'm working on the heel (which is its own kind of challenge lol). The deadline is, of course, by next December, but I think I can do it faster than 11 months lol!

This afternoon, right around 1PM, keyboard for scale

Right now! Look at that chonker of a sockbag!

I'm pretty darn proud of my progress, especially considering the first attempt I made was... not this big lol. I started that one with a 6.0mm hook and made it only 42 stitches across (for 21 sitches/side) and it was only about 3" long when I started over.

I'll try and finish the heel and get started on the (sigh) shaft by next week!

If you're working on something, good luck on it!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC