Yay! My hubby got his care package today. I sent him a box of Christmas nuts, Peppermint bark from William-Sonoma, homemade Christmas cookies, fake snow, a handmade ‘Our First Christmas’ ornament, a string of lights, a hand-knit Christmas stocking and a hand-knit mini Christmas tree. I think it was a very good Christmas care package, and he said he really liked it and it was like getting Christmas in a box, which is what I was going for. It made me just a little bit sad because it reminded me that we don’t get to spend the holidays together. I’m going back to Michigan for Christmas, but I’m alone for Thanksgiving. I don’t think I’m even going to get to eat turkey. Its just hard to spend your first holidays as husband and wife apart from each other. It’s going to be rough this year.
Anyway, I wanted to show off the stocking and the Christmas tree, so here goes:
The stocking is the Falling Snow Stocking pattern. It’s pretty straight forward, its basically just a very large sock. I had to alter the pattern a bit because my yarn was the wrong weight and I went down on the needle size because of that. I also doubled the stitches for Austin’s stockings because I was replacing snowflakes in the second row with letters for the name. This ended up being a bit much, which is why the stocking looks a bit large. I decided I liked it though. For mine I only added a quarter more stitches so its a bit more reasonably sized (and also still in progress). So essentially Austin’s is the ‘Daddy’ stocking and mine is the ‘Mommy’ stocking. Eventually, we’ll also have kids ones that will also be smaller. I may also end up redoing Austin’s eventually, but he said it was cute and I told him that it has to be that big because that’s how much I love him. 
The Christmas tree is this Fun Fur pattern. It is pretty easy too, you just keep increasing stitches until its as wide and as tall as you want. I only messed up on two things, I didn’t catch that you are supposed to use the normal yarn with the fun fur yarn right away. I also had trouble in the very first rows because there were only five stitches and it was hard to keep the orientation correct. You really can’t see or count stitches as you go along either, but it also hides mistakes so its not a big deal. It’s a very quick knit.
Now I just have to do the Christmas ornament patterns I got from knit picks.
Filed under: Army, FO's, Knitting Tagged: | Care Packages, Christmas, Deployment, Falling Snow Stocking, Fun Fur Christmas Tree
