FO alert: Special K's Christmas Stocking

Two years ago at Christmas time, I realized that if you looked at my house with our Christmas decorations you wouldn't know that I was a Knitter.  That prompted me to begin my scheming so that one day when the holiday's came around, knitting would literally throw up all over our home!  Each year I plan to knit something new for holiday decorations.  The first step in this plan was to knit stockings.  I was only able to complete the ones for my daughters last year before Christmas came so this year my goal is to have the Dad and Mom ones completed.

Here are the ones I completed for the girls last year.  I used the same pattern and yarn for these as the details below for Special K's but if you want to see the specifics of these you can check out the project pages for Carmen's and Maria's on ravelry.  As you can tell, I opted to stray from the typical green and red Christmas colors.

And here is Special K's stocking all ready for this Christmas!  After my sister gave him the idea, he wanted Michigan colors as he's a big fan! Ignore the wall design...it is not my favorite but we haven't started redoing the living room since we moved in.

Project details
Ravelry Project link
Pattern: A NEW Family Portrait - A Collection of Three Christmas Stockings by Dorene Delaney Giordano
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Cascade 220® Sport
Cast on: May 19th, 2014
Finished: July 18, 2014
Notes:  I am so happy with how this came out!  The stocking for Carmen was my first colorwork and I was so nervous.  Color work is actually easier than I had anticipated but it is so potato chipy!  That means that I just can't do one row and want to just knit the next line to see where the pattern goes.  It's so fun to knit and I can't wait to see them all up and making my house festive. 

My only real struggle with these was getting the tension of the floats correct on the sides where the loops of the needles are.  I knit these using the magic loop method.   I think my tension is still a bit tight although Maria's was knit a little looser as I was more comfortable with it then.

I was so excited to have completed his stocking this weekend that I immediately wound yarn and cast mine on Sunday night!  It's not going to count for big points in the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup but I think I'll have to just live with that.  UNLESS I can finish mine in 10 days and then it will be lots of class points.

All in all, I'm so glad I picked this pattern, which is very well written.  She has a ton of other similar patterns to choose from so if you want to have different patterns for all your family you can.   The last step for all of these will be to line them but I'm waiting until they are all complete before I do that.

Happy Knitting!

What holiday decorations have you knit or crocheted for your house?  Are you planning to craft some this year?