Happy Christmas!

My Christmas knitting this year consisted of one thing: my niece's stocking. It took hours of charting, days of poring over tiny swatches on the internet, and weeks of knitting. Happily, I finished it well before Christmas, and now it is blocked and beautiful and ready to hang.



The charts and colours are my own design. The foot of the stocking was a combination of the Falling Snow Stocking and the Royal Christmas Stocking. The wool is all Jamieson and Smith Shetland Jumper Weight, in a variety of pretty colours. It took less than a ball of all the colours save the light blue and the green.



This very pretty type is a free alphabet for knitting from Little Cotton Rabbits.

I am quite pleased with the dogs and the horses too. Check out this fuzzy little Jack Russell.



The horses are duplicated stitched on. Handy, since I had the flu and not much else to do.



And the hanging loop? I wanted it to match the latvian braid so I did some fingerloop braiding, which I learned at summer camp years ago. I used this lovely tutorial and video to remind me how to do it.

It's lined with a pretty robin-and-holly print, but I don't have a photo of that. I just didn't want little fingers getting caught in all that stranding!

I wish everyone a happy Christmas. May you eat and drink well, be warm and cosy, and enjoy yourself!