Our Christmas Stockings

Have you ever desecrated a perfectly good cabled sweater? I have.



Twice.



That one was from Ireland. Yup. An Irish cabled sweater. And I felted it and its cousin from England, cutting off their sleeves afterwards.



But why?? Dear holy Patrick, saint of wet and windy weather…Why???

THOMY and I are starting a tradition this year. We are filling stockings for each other with all manner of goodies and trinkets. The snag in our plan was that we didn't have any stockings.  Sooo, I found a lovely little pattern on Martha Stewart's website. Literally, it's little. I enlarged it…



Then I enlarged it again manually, taping the pieces to some cereal box cardboard I have handy. And I photocopied that mock up.



I had to sketch a few lines to reconnect the pieces, but I made sure the pattern fit the smaller set of sleeves.



Both stockings cut out and pinned together:



Both stockings done!



I know. Our stockings have cankles. But all stockings have cankles. So there. What is awesome is I was able to use the sleeve cuffs as the stocking cuffs, too.  I'm also jazzed that I was able to use two scrap cable lengths as the hanging loops. I just zig-zagged the edges and sewed the loops on by hand.  (Because, you know, it's a virtue to salvage every last bit from a perfectly good sweater one has just cut into.)

I didn't line the stockings, and I probably won't unless the aforementioned trinkets poke through, such as a diamond stick pin.  They could do that.