Piping the Stocking

I was mulling over ideas for a class I’m hoping to do this fall with Lincoln Land Community College. It’s taking advantage of all the experience I now have making Christmas stockings (7 in a short period of time) and aims at teaching all the principles of sock knitting by knitting a Christmas stocking.

I was thinking about the patterns I want to do for the class and what sort of things I want to incorporate. In the middle of my ponderings, as I was wandering off to sleep, I suddenly realized that you could add an i-cord piping to the stocking to mimic what you see most often in sewn or quilted stockings.

The next morning I cast on and came up with this.

It will work best knitting in the round, I believe, so I cast on 10 green stitches, 3 pink, 10 green and 3 pink and joined up the round. Now normally you can’t knit intarsia in the round. Why? Because once you’ve knit across, the working yarn is at the end of the pattern. If you’re working in the round, once you come back to that point, the yarn is on the other side of the pattern. It’s sort of like taking a boat from the shore to the island. The next person who wants to come to the island is stuck because the boat’s already on the other side.

Now, think for a minute. An i-cord is knit across, then the stitches are moved over and the row is knit across from the beginning again, right? It creates a round, continuous thing of knitting. A knitted cord, as it were. In knitterly circles, we call it an i-cord. There's a story behind the name but I'll leave that to another time and move on.

If you add that to the stitches cast on as above, when you knit across the green and get to the pink, you’re going to pull the working yard back from the other side to knit the 3 pink stitches, right? Right. Therefore, you’re doing exactly what you would do to make an i-cord but it’s incorporated into your knitting! Wha-la! Insta-piping.

You just have to make sure you wrap the green and pink working strands on every row and Bob’s your uncle (or at least a very close relative, as they say).

Have a go and see if it doesn’t work.

Even when it's raining

it's springtime in my heart (and in my purse). It's amazing how quickly this pattern has gone. See what you get when you give the yarn its head? Umhummm...

This first picture hasn't the greatest color but it shows the construction of crocheting the 2 halves and connecting them with the green in the middle. That green space will become the bottom of the middle pocket which will be green and will be fairly simple but with a little bit of a lacy border that will stick out just a little bit from between the 2 outer sections. I haven't decided quite how I'm going to do the handles yet, whether they'll be crocheted, knitted or ready-made.

This gives you a little better view of what the final thing will look like. Robert the Bear approves.

Lincoln Land Class
I had good news today (in the midst of a pig of a day at work) that I've got 8 people registered for the Knitting with Jewelry Wire and Beads class at the local community college. I believe I had 7 in the autumn so it seems to be a popular class. I've got a couple of new things to show this group that I've been experimenting with.

I've also got a couple of ideas for classes later this year that I'm very excited about. Stay tuned.

Christmas Stockings
I'm now finished with Santa's face on the 7th of the Christmas stockings, 7th of 7 I might add. Once I get the foot section knitted, all I'll have left is stitching the faces and finishing stuff. I'm surprised to say that I've really quite enjoyed making them but I think I'm full. As I told someone the other day, I think I've done my part! I never got a photo of the first group of 4 but I will make every effort to get photos of these, if only to prove I did it!