Christmas is Coming

Oh, c'mon now.  You can't stick your head in the sand forever.  You should have seen the shocked faces when on the last day of school I told people in the office there was only SIX months till Christmas.  You'd have thought I said it was snowing.  LOL.

 For a refresher, there is the stocking I'm replicating.

I was able to match all the colours really closely, except the green.  I thought one of these yarns would work, and in the above picture, the one on the right isn't too "bad".

But in brighter light, it wasn't right at all.  I just couldn't bring myself to use it.  I thought I'd wait until the fall yarns come out, and see what I can find.  I was using mainly Astra, and two weeks ago heard that there was a new green.  The colour on my computer looked promising, but when I saw it in the store?  Way too bright :(  I picked out a couple other colours and came home.  I took some time looking at Sirdar's website and found some colours that would work.  BUT...one store was closing for holiday (new grandson!) and the other store didn't have colour cards with yarn samples and I don't trust printed colour cards in this situation.  I might have had luck at another store, but it's further away and I just didn't want to make another trip.

One of the colours I picked up when I went looking at the new Astra colour, was really close.  But, it's Red Heart "Soft"...a worsted weight yarn with 4 plies.  I would have to pick out one of the plies.  Ugh.  I got started on the first stocking, using one of the bigger names, to see how it would look because the white section was going to be one row longer.  

Interesting, now my gauge is off compared to my solid coloured sample.  On one hand, the two coloured side is a bit loose and takes up more than half the swatch, and the solid white part (not seen in the photo, but is the back side of the stocking) is too tight.  I know blocking will even out some of this.  But this was a great working swatch, and I know somethings I want to do differently now.  Like, last night I sat there and while watching TV, picked out one ply of the "Soft" and made little balls, rather than trying to work directly from the large ball!  I see a blib of green next to the S at the end of Christmas, and I don't like the K in Patrick.  Also, the middle of Patrick somehow ended up using the full 4 plies of "Soft" and is a little lumpy.

Everyone who sees the picture seems to think it looks awesome.  So here's hoping the improvements work and Jason loves the end results!

Yarn In:  141gr + 2876gr = 3017gr
Yarn Out:   4447gr
Balance:  1430gr more used UP than brought in
Costs:  $5.53 +  $139.55=$145.08 /230 days = $0.63/day