Heirloom in the making.
My daughter in law, Julie, has a stocking her aunt had made many, many years ago ( for all the kids, nieces and nephews). Now that she is married she would like a replica with matching stocking for hubby.
How can I turn down such a request? I love it.
It took a while to get the pattern from one of the cousins and since I was told that I don’t have to do this EXACT pattern ( see picture), I want to change two things right away:

1. I will knit this in the round
2. I will use fair isle knitting instead of duplicate stitching.
3. I also found a pattern with some other motifs, so I am thinking to incorporate those.

Yarn: since this is purely decorative and not a garment which needs to keep someone warm and feel good against the skin, I choose to use an acrylic yarn for durability.

When I start on the name I will have the first 12 and last 11 sts of the round on needle 1 and 37 sts on needle 2. I am making the spaces between letters a bit smaller so you can read the whole name ( more or less) when the stocking is hung ( see picture of graph.).

Santa. The graph for the Santa was basically illegible, but I was happy to find the perfect chart in the pattern by Susan Springett.

Deviating from the original
Worked the name and Santa with stranded knitting. Also used a bobble stitch ( P, YO, P/ then p3tog) for the beard and using a couple of other remnants for the face and fur trim.
Towards the end I switched to Intarsia and finished Santa that way since it was such few sts.
For the decreases I am working a Double Center Decrease since I am knitting in the round.

It’s still sort of the same, just different…

Speaking of different: I decided to do an Afterthought HEEL. as I did in this stocking store sample Christmas stocking : https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Strickliese/basic-christ...

7.20.2022 Finished Julie’s stocking, now on to the second one for Rich. I think it looks close to the original which her aunt had knitted.

7.25.2022. Worked on it like a fiend and iRich’s stocking is finished, too! Yeah; it’s like Christmas in July.