Gwen W. Steege - Knit Christmas Stockings, 2nd Edition 19 Patterns for Stockings & Ornaments

Real socks must fit a three-dimensional foot and, for comforts sake, have few or no seams. Knitted from top to toe, in the round on circular or double-pointed needles, socks are shaped as you knit. Heres a brief rundown of the basic structure to help you envision your sock project as a whole.

Each stocking in this book starts at the top by knitting the cuff and then the leg. When you get to the ankle, you set aside the stitches across the top of the foot (the instep) on a spare needle or stitch holder and, for just this section, knit back and forth on straight needles to create a little rectangle called the heel flap. Next, you pick up stitches along both sides of the heel flap, retrieve the instep stitches, and again begin to knit circularly. To accommodate the wider shape of the foot at the ankle, the diameter of the sock is wider here than at the leg and along the length of the foot, so in order to narrow the stocking again to create the foot, you make a series of decreases at each side of the heel, forming the gusset. When the foot is the desired length, you shape the toe with further reductions. Close off the toe stitches, and your stocking is ready to hang!

Todays yarn selection makes knitting more fun than its ever been before. The stockings in this book were knit with yarns of varied fiber content and weight. We tell you exactly which yarns the pictured stockings were knit with, but we hope that youll enjoy experimenting with your own color combinations and yarn varieties wool, cotton, synthetics, and blends, and maybe even luxury fibers. After all, a very special stocking may someday become a family heirloom. The choice is yours, as long as you keep in mind that you must get the gauge indicated by the pattern (see , below).

Be sure to buy enough yarn to complete your project. Youll find information about the number of skeins needed for each pattern in this book, along with the weight and yardage of the skeins we used. If you substitute, be sure to compare your yarns yardage to the pattern requirement. Yardage is usually listed on the label; if not, ask your yarn shop to check the manufacturers specifications. Its always a good idea to buy an extra skein to avoid running short; most yarn shops accept returns of untouched skeins of yarn as long as you do so within a reasonable length of time. Check your shops return policy.