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I'd never done an afterthought heel, so on December 4th, 2018, knowing I wanted to knit some stockings, I did a test one in worsted weight acrylic.
I decided to make a simple sock blocker just for the heel, to see how it would look stretched into shape.
Not bad! Time to make stockings...
I had exactly 3 skeins of Pointsettia, and 1 of Green, in Ella Ray Chunky Merino Superwash, which I'd picked up for 70% off from Anacapa Yarns (they were closing) at their booth at the Ventura County Handweavers & Spinners Guild Annual Harvest Sale and Show in Camarillo, CA, USA.
I wanted to use this yarn to make Christmas stockings, so I looked up chunky weight stocking patterns, found one that I liked the shape of, and then realized it was 19" tall!
I reworked the numbers in the pattern to get what I thought would be the right size, far-smaller stockings, and hoped that I'd have enough yarn. I planned to use red for the body, and green for the cuff, heel, and toe. Let the anxiety copmmence!
The cuff is stockinette, with a purl ridge to make it fold over crisply.
Folding the top of the cuff in.
The cuff, folded it in half, is sewn to itself by picking up stitches, i.e. without any sewing, but just continued knitting.
Given that I was reworking the pattern to be much smaller, I had to figure out how many inches to go before turning the heel, so when I figured I had enough, I sketched the rest on paper to help me visualize it. This looked about right.
I added the sacrificial yarn to half of the body for the afterthought heel. I've learned through Roxanne Richardson that this is really a forethought heel, because I'm planning where it will be. True afterthought heels are cut ("steeked" - cutting knitting is called steeking) into the tube later.
This is the back of the sock. The green line indicates where the heel will be fit in.
Once the toe is done, the sacrificial line of yarn at the heel is removed, and needles are slid in place, and then the heel is knit. It turns out the heel is identical to the toe, even if they don't appear to be so.
First stocking done! That hole right at the tip of the heel is a common issue in hand knit socks. There are various ways of remedying this, none of which I followed here :-D
Had to play a bit for Instagram :)
On to sock 2! Or was it 3 at this point?
Here's a view of finishing the toe.
2 stockings done, and one with just the heel left to do. I did about 2 too many decrease rounds on the heel on the right sock, so it's pointier, and it will bother me every year when we put these out.
Different view of setting up for the heel knitting
Stocking 1: 42g.
Stocking 2: 43g.
Stocking 3: 42g.
The first 3 stockings together: 127g.
I have 38g of red left. Given that I'm still on the first of the 3 100g skeins, I've only used 20⅔ grams for each stocking, so 38 is more than enough to finish the 4th one. This is working out well!
Okay, I've used just over 75g of this 100g skein for the cuffs, toes, and heels of 3 stockings, which means this is going to be close. I don't technically have enough, but I have cut off some tails as I've gone, and I did knit a few rounds too many on one of the heels. #tension
Just for completeness, I weighed the Ella Rae Chunky Merino Superwash label - 3g!
Stocking 4 - here's hoping I have enough yarn to finish up!
Cuff folded over and joined in through picked up stitches.
Good so far! Here's the inside/front side of the stocking.
Inside cuff.
Inside toe.
Inside out stocking - looks nice and clean on this side.
Inside out stocking, kinda messy on this side, with all the tails.
All 4 done, only 2 days after I began! Here's another bit of posed Instagram fun.
This worked out so perfectly! I think I have 2-3 yards left of the green color.
Still 21g of red! My scaling down of the original, 19" tall pattern couldn't have been much more perfect.
These are all the tails I cut off after weaving in ends and such. There's more tail wastage than there was leftover yarn!
This was an attempt at making sock blockers for my knit stockings. I traced one, and then added about a half inch all around, thinking that would be enough.
Blockers cut! I was flying home soon, so I wanted to block them all ASAP.
I used duct tape to seal up the blockers. I only made 2. Each is 2 pieces of cardboard, with corrugation running 90° to each for strength, like plywood.
Soaking my first stocking! This is my first wool (superwash) soak/block. The only other thing I'd done was the Emily Dickinson shawl (see my projects).
Holy moly does superwash grow when wet! It's hard to tell here, but when I pulled the stocking out of the bowl, it was like a sleeping cat. It seemed so much longer than when it went in. It also felt kind of slimy, because superwash is so slippery.
Here began 2 days of trying to dry these things. I gave up on the inadequate blockers I'd made. They were so much smaller than they needed to be. I just pinned them all the blocking mats, and then they just sat there, wet, forever.
To speed up the drying, because I had to pack and get on a plane in a couple of days, I moved the board into my office, stood it up against the wall, and pointed my oscillating space heater at it for the rest of the day. Still soaked! I had to move them under a ceiling fan overnight.
At various points over December, I designed 4 initials for the stockings. I first looked up fancy lettering as knit stitch and cross stitch patterns, but all were too big, or had the wrong look. I finally used multiple reference alphabets and designed out my own letters, to the scale I needed.
G is for Gary (me).
J is for Joyce, my mom.
M is for Merlin, a white dog, who is a bit of a pain, but cute.
B is for Bella, somewhere between a chihuahua and a corgi, and adorably obstinate.
For the B (for Bella), I found a charted B I loved, but it was much too big, so I mapped it to the smaller 13x14 grid I needed to fit my own stockings. This was like design work, adding a pixel, stepping back, saying "nah," removing it again, and repeating until pretty.
Flash forward from December 6th to December 24th, and I'm still having to duplicate stitch our initials into these things. I tried some red Caron Simply Soft, thinking it would be a nice, subtle relief, but nah.
I had a bunch of Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in this barberpole Red Beacon color. It's a super bulky, and the stocking is bulky, and it was a bit of a fight, and I could tell it was going to be a crazy looking mess, so nope.
After way too much thinking and testing, I used Caron Simply Soft in "Gold" to duplicate stitch on Bella's initial.
Here I am, by the fireside, on a cold, windy night, with mom, watching a Hallmark movie starring Candace Cameron Buré, and embroidering a big M for Merlin on his stocking.
Finished! This is at nearly 4AM on Christmas morning! Cutting it so close!
Mom had some florist's wire, so I took long pieces of that, folded them into hooks, and left enough to wrap around things on the beautifully carved mantel, so nothing was damaged. Then I went to bed so I could be up at all on Christmas Day!
Mom was up for hours before me, and she didn't notice the stockings for the first hour or two :-D Here they are, getting toasted over the fire, as I watch the local (Gatlinburg) Christmas parade, which for some reason featured the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
photos above
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gfixler
Tiny Stockings
viewed 33 times
Finished
December 4, 2018
December 24, 2018
255 projects,
in 246 queues
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by Caron
Aran
100% Acrylic
315 yards
/
170
grams
238405 projects
stashed 101100 times
stashed
gfixler's star rating
by Ella Rae
Bulky
100% Merino
136 yards
/
100
grams
1034 projects
stashed 951 times
gfixler's star rating
- Project created: February 15, 2019
- Finished: February 16, 2019
- Updated: December 27, 2021
