The Girl Is Crafty Like Ice Is Cold

I've implicitly and explicitly referred to my project of making Christmas stockings. Well, today I finally finished them and am ready to show them off! I'm really unnecessarily proud of myself, so bear with me.

We were at Target a couple weeks ago, when DB brought up buying stockings. We have this discussion every year. We actually have stockings. Very nice, fully functioning stockings, with our names in glitter. However, every year DB always complains that our stockings suck, and he wants to buy new stockings. Well, then I got the bright idea that hey, I can make my own stockings! After all, I just made a Smurf hat, and isn't a Christmas stocking just a glorified Smurf hat? I had this idea that I could buy sweaters from Goodwill and use that as my material.

When we returned home, I did a quick Google search, and came up with this website: Felted Sweater Stocking Tutorial. But felted wool? Did I really need to use wool? In my original idea, I was just going to use any sweaters. I wondered if wool made a difference. The next day, I took Muni to Goodwill and scoured the 50% off racks. I chose 2 wool sweaters and 2 cotton sweaters.


I then washed and dried all the sweaters, as per the "felting" instructions. As expected, the wool sweaters came out fluffy and felted, but the cotton sweaters didn't change at all. They just got clean.

I'm not really sure why felting is so desirable, especially since, and none of the websites I looked at warned me of this: WOOL SHRINKS. The lovely wool sweaters I had painstakingly chosen for their pattern and size shrunk to itsy bitsy tiny proportions. The large, beautiful stockings I had envisioned would be reduced to booties! I wanted to cry.

However, since I paid $2.50 for each sweater, I was determined to make stockings. They're not perfect, but I think they have a lot of personality, and I love them. And as LB grows up, she can say, "My mom made my stocking."


Before:


After:


The wool stockings came out thicker and stiffer and hold their shape better. The cotton ones are limp and lifeless, however, they did not shrink in the wash, and so I was able to make them bigger. That's your trade off, if anyone is thinking of doing this project.

I sewed everything by hand, since I don't have a sewing machine. This was the perfect project for me, since each stocking probably took me less than an hour, and I could split it up over naptimes and evenings. And it was so satisfying to see them taking shape so quickly. It felt so good to have a completed stocking at the end of the day. I think that's why I could never learn to knit. Lord knows I tried. But I was so slow, and after days and days everything I made still looked like a knotted mess, or a coaster at best.

This project was also influenced by my recent kick to consume and waste less. One of my assignments for my Sociology class was to watch this video, the Story of Stuff. It's 20 minutes long, and not that it "changed my life," but it was all something I've been thinking a lot about, how my own consumerism is destroying the planet I live in. So, I'm trying to do my part, little by little, looking for small ways I can reduce how much stuff I buy, and ways I can reuse and remake things into useful items.

Check out this gift I wrapped for DB today:

That's a Panera Bread paper bag and a net that held 4 avocados.

I also used my hot glue gun for the first time and made these for LB:

Those are food barrettes, man. A hamburger barrette. A croissant. A kiwi cake. I want to go back and buy hundreds of them to make, but that isn't exactly me consuming less.