My friend and fellow knitter, Linsey Hollingshead,
brought me a Christmas stocking made by her
grandmother. She wanted to continue the
tradition of hand-knitted Christmas stockings for
each member of her family, starting with her
husband of a few months, Steve. So, I counted
stitches, and wrote up some instructions for her.
She did a great job in knitting it and I’m proud to
say that it was her first sock-like object.

It’s a pretty traditional top-down sock
construction, with a seamed, shaped leg, a
standard flap-and-gusset round heel, and a
grafted toe. It is a great beginner project because
the stitches are all easy to see and you only need
to make one at a time - no second sock
syndrome.

Linsey’s grandma was not fooling around when it
came to her Swiss darning, either. She had lovely
Christmas ornaments on the stockings for the
men, and names, as well. Linsey worked out her
designs on knitter’s graph paper and chose the
alphabet for the names from a book of
embroidered alphabets. She then copied the
letters she needed onto knitter’s graph paper, and
went from there. It is really lovely.

The website that previously hosted this has dropped all of my old patterns. They are currently unavailable, but I may reissue them at another time.