Snow Day Stocking Knitting Pattern

It’s the time of year when people start thinking about knitting Christmas stockings, and this is a great one to knit in a flash that you can easily make in different colors for each family member or to use up scraps from all the other projects you’ve knit this year.

The Snow Day Stocking from Purl Soho use two different colors of yarn held together throughout and is worked on size 17 US knitting needles, so you know it will work up fast.

This is actually a great project if you’ve never knit a sock before, or if you’ve never worked a toe-up sock before, because on the larger scale all the “tricky” bits go by really fast but you’re still learning the skills you would use on a foot-sized sock.

But even if you’re totally comfortable with sock making this is a great little pattern that looks like a real ragg sock, which is pretty darn charming.

You can grab the free pattern at Purl Soho.

[Photo: Purl Soho.]

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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