12 Weeks of Gifting — Week 10: Hope and Cheer

This week’s discount and gifting pattern recommendation is a Christmastime favorite of mine: Hope and Cheer! 

I really love these little mini stockings. They’re the perfect size to hold a gift card or a portion of homemade candies, or to hang on the tree as an ornament. But they’re also the perfect project for learning or perfecting sock skills. 

These little stockings use all the same skills that full-sized socks for humans use, but you only have to make one, and they don’t have to fit anybody! After making them, most people find they’re much less intimidated by the whole sock process. It’s a win-win-win.

Hope and Cheer are a super-quick knit, working up in just an evening. You may find you’ll want to make more than one. And you can! The pattern includes instructions for adding contrasting color heels and toes, no-jog multi-round stripes, and even single-row helical stripes, for many different options. It even guides you step-by-step through a Shadow Wrap short-row heel (with pictures!), which is not only a great sock skill to have in your toolkit, but a really great short row method that not everyone knows.

The yarn I knit these samples with is Tina’s Toasty Toes 100% Peruvian Highland Wool in Cardinal Red, Forest Green, and Highland Natural. It’s a great yarn with good body and a nice hand. But you can also use a different worsted-weight yarn, or indeed any yarn you have around. The pattern includes instructions for working in any weight of yarn and any number of stitches, all the way up to a full-sized stocking.

The Hope and Cheer pattern really is a gem. And this week you can save 20% on it in my Ravelry and Payhip shops with code HOPEAND20.