My Grown Up Christmas Gift

Here I am and I’m so excited. I started to knit specific things for specific people just before Thanksgiving. You know that isn’t my normal Christmas knitting. I thought I’d try something different. I was just getting a little bored with “half to” knitting when I got this amazing phone call from my long time friend Marcia. She said she needed to ask me something which she thought I’d probably never been asked. We met at Ann’s By Design and Marcia showed me a Christmas stocking. The stocking was knit for Marcia by her ex-mother-in-law. When Marcia was first married all members of her new family received Christmas stocking, males received Santas and females received Christmas Trees. Here is Marcia’s Stocking.

What Marcia was asking, could I change the name from “Marcia” to “Kristen” ? Kristen is her son Zac’s serious girlfriend. I was up for a challenge and bored with Christmas knitting so I said, “Let me try.” From that minute, I began searching for yarn that would fit in with this amazing stocking. I went to Ann’s By Design where I found one yarn that might work but needed two more. I decided I wanted all three yarns to be the same brand so decided to take some more trips. I went to Joann’s but found nothing. I went to Hobby Lobby but found nothing. I was sad but not giving up. I decided to go to The Stash Studio where I found this.

Is this perfect or what !?!?!?! The green was left over from an afghan I made for Kathy several years ago.

I think it is amazing even if I do say so myself. Look at the second row from the bottom, the second square from the left. The yarn of the little green tree is the color I chose. I decided to get the stocking out to see how the 3 yarns worked with the yarns in the stocking. I looked in the knitting bag where I kept the project. No stocking. I looked in other knitting bags. No stocking. I looked in my car. No stocking. I looked in my closet. No stocking. With each new look, my heart was racing in a higher gear and my anxiety was climbing. I sat down and refrained from getting a glass of wine as I didn’t think that would help my problem solving. I decided to trace my steps. Where had I been? Where was the last place I remembered seeing it? How was I going to tell Marcia I lost her priceless heirloom stocking? Finally, as a last resort, I decided to call Hobby Lobby. I wasn’t in tears but almost. After being put on hold for what felt like forever, someone finally said it was waiting for me at one of the registers. I did burst into tears then and immediately got in my car. Relief is too mild a word for what I felt. I got the stocking and I was ready to roll. I began looking for patterns for letters.

None worked because they all were 2 stitch lines. Then I decided to create my own using the letters on Marcia’s stocking as a guide. But that didn’t work because Kristen had one more letter than Marcia which made the first and last letter disappear. So I revised the 5 stitch letter and made it a 4 stitch. I was ready to rumble. I cast-on for the ribbing and I was off. At the end of the ribbing, I compared the original with my knitting. EEKS! The knitter of the stocking was a very tight knitter, my sample wouldn’t work at all. I went down to a size 4 needle for a worsted yarn. It worked perfectly! I kind of felt like the 3 bears as I worked through this challenge.

I had one more problem to solve. I needed to find a way to attach my new piece to the original stocking. The obvious solution was the dreaded Kitchener Stitch but I hate the Kitchener Stitch! There are many knitting techniques I have mastered but that isn’t one of them. I worked for almost a day. Weaving the stitches, taking them out. Weaving the stitches, taking them out. It looked horrible and very amateurish. After all of my hard work, I wasn’t about to let the dreaded Kitchener Stitch dampen my efforts. I finally decided to try a 3-needle bind off on the wrong side. Let me make the big reveal.

Marcia and I were going to Opera Uptown together so that was the scene of the unveiling. We both cried a bit. I must say, this was one of my best ever Christmas gifts. It is what Christmas is all about. Little money, lots of love and a piece of my heart. It truly was a grown up Christmas gift.

Tomorrow we leave for the Coastal Condo so my next post will be from there. To all of you, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Don’t forget to put a piece of your heart in your Christmas knitting.