I know I've shared

with y'all that a few years back my sweetie asked me to learn how to knit a STOCKING.

His mother has always made these gorgeous heritage Christmas stockings for the family - 

 starting way back in the fifties - with her immediate family

[see Craig's on the left <-->

and knitting one for each family member 

as they came along - 

Here's her most recent one for little Hank

LOVE!

Isn't it adorable?!

Sooooo - I bought myself a 'Teach Yourself to Knit' book at Wal-Mart during the 2009 extended-work-out-of-town period of my life and got to it - I won't lie - it was a hard process, 
and I ended up watching a video or two. 

Turns out - I knit left handed - ha. 

-- Maybe my daddy was right when he said he FORCED me 
to be right-handed -- he was a leftie afterall...

{I love those cast-on instructions up there!}

Back to the point of this post

- I'm selfish. 

And I want our family stockings to stay at my house for as long as I'm able to put them up on the mantle - so I've been mulling an idea around in my head for a year or so -- why not create an original pattern and knit the oldest and sweet dau-law stockings for their own mantle?

 So I did - 

I was pretty sure that I couldn't go wrong 

with a Disney theme - 

I just drew my little mickey heads and wonky stars 

right over a copy of a pattern I had 

[If I'd had small graph paper handy I would've just drawn it on that - and probably will clean it up on that eventually -]

I've knitted at least three Christmas stockings in the last few years [more?] so I know I can get one done in 

just a few weeks if I stay focused on it - 

But I wasn't counting on a couple of long-distance travel trips right in the middle of my prime knitting time - lol,

So I did end up spending an entire day knitting 

while watching holiday TV. 

... with the tiny dog on my lap - Ha.

Also, I knew I wanted my stars to have a 

wonky hand-drawn look to them, 

but, oh my...

In the end they needed a 

few touch-ups here and there. 

Ha.

But - I'm happy to report that they turned out 
just as I'd envisioned them.

I love everything about them - 

the red - black - and yellow - the wonky stars - the tassels to remind me of fireworks in the park.

Love it.

{Hope it inspires you to do something crafty too!}