Join Me and Learn How to Knit a Sock

If you’re into holiday crafting, whether knitting or otherwise, Rebecca Page has a holiday crafting summit coming up that you’ll want to check out.

The summit runs from Nov. 14-18 and includes access to 48 classes over those days. There are classes in knitting, crochet, paper crafts, embroidery and more.

You can sign up for the summit for free and get 24-hour access to each day’s classes, or there is a VIP option that gets you full access to unlimited replays of the classes, plus three classes that are only available to VIP users.

One of those is mine! It’s a class all about learning how to knit socks, using a worsted weight mini stocking as our learning pattern. This stocking is big enough to hold a gift card, and you can embellish it any way you like, from knitting stripes to adding a duplicate stitch design, sewing on buttons or beads, even adding a cable or pattern stitch to the body as you knit.

The class covers three different ways to work in the round, three ways to join your knitting for working in the round, knitting all the parts of the sock including a heel flap with a wrap and turn heel that’s over so fast you won’t have time to be nervous.

It’s such a cute little project that’s great for teacher gifts, or make an advent calendar full of little stockings to hold tiny treats all season long. What a fun stash buster that would be!

Again my class is only available if you choose the VIP option, but there are a lot of other fun classes you can get for free if you’re available to watch that week. Check out all the offerings at Rebecca Page. (PS there’s a knitting summit coming up in the new year and I’m thinking about classes if you have something you’d love to see let me know!)

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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