This year, I hadn’t planned on any knit, crochet, or woven Christmas stuff. And usually when I do make such plans, they’re for crochet items, which are significantly faster. But then, as it happened, I had a yarn that I wanted to swatch for photos, and so sometime in late October I decided I’d combine that need to swatch with a knit scarf for my third grader’s teacher — it’s her first year as a full teacher, our son isn’t the easiest student in the world to teach, and she’s really been going above and beyond in my opinion, and I usually do like to give a handmade fiber gift to his teachers. Or chocolate. So, I started lackadaisically knitting up 200 yards of the handpaint tussah single into a fairly lazy little improvised lacy diamonds kind of thing, which since I wasn’t knitting on it with any great regularity, I just barely managed to finish yesterday afternoon.

In lieu of blocking — which lacy knitting truly requires — I opted to wash it, and iron it dry. This worked out very nicely, however, and the finished scarf was not only thus dry in time to wrap and send in to school with our son on his last day of school before winter break, but super-flat, shiny, and wispy — and almost 8 inches wide and 5 feet long.

More of this same yarn is available in my eBay store, here.If that link doesn’t work out for you, just go straight to the store home, and enter “raw silk” in the search box. The handspun, hand-dyed tussah singles I routinely list for sale would also make similar scarves, but are finer; whereas this scarf was knit on US size 6 / 4mm needles, I’d recommend a US 4 / 3.5mm needle for the handspun tussah singles.

Other than that scarf, right after Thanksgiving, my better half mentioned — as he has more than once in the past — this one Christmas when his mother knit everyone in the extended family stockings, and how those had been the best stockings ever, and they were SO stretchy that as Christmas stockings they just were so great, and the next time I was talking to his mother, maybe I might ask her for that pattern. Indeed, I thought, I should finally do that.

Unfortunately, the pattern was lost some time ago, but she was able to lend me a finished stocking, from which to reconstruct the pattern. Armed with the actual object, the web, and — believe it or not — Red Heart Super Saver and sparkly acrylic “holiday” yarn, I set out to make three of them. These, I narrowly completed the night before last, and they now grace the mantel which Chad had put up specifically as a platform from which stockings could be hung.

Edward’s was by far the most annoying; I can’t give “Red Heart Holiday” a particularly glowing review as yarn, nor is the resulting fabric terribly appealing; but it was the yarn he chose! And yes, folks, this handspinner is totally unrepentant about using cheap acrylic yarn for this project — Christmas stockings, after all, will be stored untouched and unseen in a dark place for most of the year, should be machine-washable if needed, and the last thing you want is to be unpacking the Christmas box and discover it’s been irretrievably moth damaged. Nothing eats that kind of yarn.

Depending on my level of ambition, however, I may redo these stockings in the coming year. Or the year after that. Certain things about them just disappoint the perfectionist in me a little.

Of course, there is a “well, that didn’t happen in time” to mention: a week and change ago, my son charmingly requested a Santa hat to wear to school, and I even bought some truly heinous but indestructible yarn for the purpose, but it just didn’t happen. I’m afraid December, and the last part of November, were largely lost to me due to dental work which I can really only term as extreme — until last week, I never knew it was possible to get half a root canal before having to be referred out to the super-specialist for the remainder of it. And never in my self-aware life have I subsisted for over a week on nothing but broth, yogurt, and pudding, nor had to commit to painkillers for weeks at a time. Here’s hoping I never do again!

Photo Gallery for 2006 Christmas Knitting
Photo Gallery for Christmas Stockings