Christmas Stocking!

I've been meaning to make Kevin and myself Christmas stockings for a couple of years now, since I sort of have the skills to do so!  This summer, I found 4 skeins of red and white yarn on sale for 50 cents apiece, and knew the opportunity was here and beckoning!  At first, I considered just making plain red stockings with white heels and toes, but then I stumbled upon a really beautiful pattern on Ravelry.com, and decided to suck it up and try for the challenging stockings.

I started this a couple months ago, but had put it aside several times to work on other projects and avoid frogging an entire section that I did incorrectly!  But this week after finishing my socks, I really put myself to work, and tonight I finished the first one.

 I am mostly happy with how it turned out, but plan on working out some kinks for the second stocking.  For one thing, I did the color work of the leg upside down.  Not at huge deal, but I'd like Kevin's stocking to look perfect!

 I love the way the snowflakes turned out, though.  It was intimidating to try a pattern like this, I'd never done any sort of color work before, and this seemed like a pretty complicated one, but I worried for nothing.  It was a total breeze!  And actually a lot of fun, because it changed all the time so it stayed interesting.  Doing the same stitch and pattern for a long time can get pretty boring.

The main trouble, and the reason this took so darn long, was the pattern for the foot did not make any sense to me!  It is supposed to be striped, but I kept having trouble on every single round with it not matching up right.  So I decided to rip it back to the leg, and start over with a regular sock pattern.  Weeelllll, apparently, that wasn't great either, because the foot on this sock is enormous!  I don't like how it looks that much, but as Kevin said, "It can fit a ton of loot!"  So if he's happy, that's all that really matters.  :)  I don't know exactly how to make it smaller, so if any of you knitters out there have any tips, let me know!

I hope to finish the second one by next week, as we are decorating the house this weekend!  But for now, it's time to focus on Thanksgiving!  Excited to see the family and enjoy a lot of food, and now that the power is back on at the in-laws, we should have an excellent time!  :)  Hope it doesn't snow too much more tonight and tomorrow!