Suitcases and Stockings

We talked a lot last Tuesday about our plans for the Foothills Craft Guild's Fall Festival, that is quickly coming our way!  In fact, a week from today we will be manning the booth!  We set up on Thursday, so that it will be all ready.  There are a lot of booths at this show, so much so that everyone is there at once trying to get the best spot along the building to unload all their stuff.  I mentioned that if we brought a dolly or two we could just park in the parking lot and wheel everything in.  At this Lou Ann said that she had heard about a weaver that put her stuff in old rolly suitcases with handles so that she didn't have to carry tubs.  Genius!



Here is a common storage tub with inventory in it.

It protects the inventory really well, but it is really uncomfortable to carry!

Here is the same bit of inventory in a rolly suitcase, the straps keep everything in protected and in place.  There is room for a lot more in this suitcase!

You can see that the sides are not sticking out or anything.  The only thing I can think of that might not be good about the suitcase is that you can't stack them as reliably as you can tubs.  All in all though, I think this is a winning idea!

 Thursday Lou Ann posted about her stockings, and I thought I might show them to you a little differently.  Here is a picture of the stockings the minute I got them off the needles.  You can see that they are roughly the same size but that the texture of the socks is a little rough looking.  There is a little ladder where the dpn's would meet, but the blocking should take care of that.

 The chair these stockings are blocking in is one of those over stuffed numbers, to give you an idea just how big they really are.  See how the fabric is really improved by blocking!  I didn't use sock blockers, I don't think they make them this big!  I just laid them out on the couch once I had most of the water out, and I began to shape them a bit, stroking this way and that.  Making sure that the decreases along the back of the leg were lining up with the fold in the sock, it was really quite simple.

I used a free pattern called "Stockings in Rhyme"  that I found on Ravelry.  It is as it says, a pattern for stockings in rhyme!  I can just see a mom writting it down to give to her daughter.   I changed the 2x2 rib at the top of the stocking to a picot edge and added eyelets so that we could string some ribbon through them to keep these babies up!

The pattern called for a heel flap and gusset, and I followed it to the letter.  Lou Ann wore her stockings to the Museum of Appalachia today, we had a school group coming in.  She says that they work wonderfully!

(It was cold!)

 I am working on my pair right now, and I am pretty sure that I will have enough yarn to make a third pair,  I will knit them to fit my friend Linda, who helped me a lot with my outfit for the Museum.  (Just like Lou Ann did!)

That is it for today,   Until next time, Happy Spinning, Knitting and Weaving, Tina