A Christmassy FO

So to round off the year, here is my final FO of 2011 - a last minute Christmas gift for Jamie, who sprung on me the surprise, just two days before Christmas, that instead of not getting any presents for me as we'd agreed he had actually bought me presents! I had to do a mad dash into town on the 23rd to pick up some presents for him, but before doing that I made good use of the hour I was up before him to crochet him a stocking!

Pattern: Bev's Christmas Granny Square Stocking by Beverly A Qualheim

Hook: 4mm

Yarn: Sirdar Bonus DK in red, green and white

I modified the pattern slightly. Instead of four round grannies, I did three, and to avoid lots of end weaving from colour changes, I used the continuous join-as-you-go instructions here for the final contrasting colour round.

For the first side, I did red in the middle surrounded by green, but for the reverse side, it's green in the middle with red outside.

I then used up the last of my white yarn to join the two sides together with a round of single crochet through both layers, doing one stitch in each dc of the clusters, and two in each chain space.

The end result came out extremely cute. I packed it full of chocolates - a Terry's Chocolate Orange in the toe (because all good stockings have an orange in the toe, and I thought a chocolate one would be better received than a couple of sad looking satsumas) and the rest is stuffed with chocolate coins (milk and white, as Jamie is a lover of white chocolate). It was a bit of a tight squeeze, because the opening isn't all that wide or stretchy, but I managed to get it all in!

I then wrapped it up in paper, so he wouldn't have any clue what it was. He even saw me working on it on Friday morning, but didn't realise what I was doing!