That time of year again

I can't believe I'm already starting on Christmas crafts... it's not even November yet!! However, when one has 7 stockings to complete before an undetermined date in December, then I probably should have been working on them weeks ago.

This all started last year. A dear friend, who is too familiar with my penchant for yarn and hook, gave me one of those quizzical looks and said "If I hand you something crocheted, do you think you could recreate it?" Well, I'm always game for a challenge so I said I'd try. She hands me a Christmas stocking that her grandmother had made for her 20 some years ago. It's been washed a multiude of times and has fallen prey to felting a bit over the years but one thing was screamingly obvious about it, it was made of granny squares. Piece of cake! She'd asked someone else a couple years ago if they could deconstruct it and come up with a pattern that she could then follow. She handed me the card. Ugh. You know you're dealing with someone unused to granny squares when they have as the first line "chain 12, join with slip stitch to first chain to make a loop". The directions were fine, the problem was the number of chains. Making the loop you'd be crocheting into 12 chains long and then only wanting to put 11 - 12 dc in it is just asking for huge gaping trouble. ...not to mention that there was no way the center portion of the original granny square design was that big.

So, being me, I set aside the "pattern" this person had come up with, grabbed hook and christmasy yarn and went to town. 5 stockings later, Steph was thrilled! Of course, the new stockings were HUGE compared to the old... so much so she was able to put her 2 month old son IN one and take his picture! It's adorable, he looks like a little pea in a pod. She understood how the original had shrunk/felted and that with how she prefers to wash them (hot water!!! eeek!) these would too... eventually.

Well. In the course of making the stockings for Steph, my acquired sister's mother and mother-in-law saw the end results of my handiwork and wanted some. Beth only really wanted one for her front door, so I whipped that up while I was making Steph's 5. Sue on the other hand, wanted to replace all the stockings she'd currently had for her three kids, their spouses and me. Yep, seven stockings. Wheeeeeee... so here I sit with skeins of "victorian" christmas colors and have to order the colors for mine... I want the "christmas" blue. ;) Yeah, I gotta be different.