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Christmas Stockings: 18 Holiday Treasures to Knit
edited by Elaine Lipson

For years if you've wanted to knit a Christmas stocking, you'd have to pour through seasonal craft magazines in hopes of finding a decent pattern.

Now that Interweave Press has published a whole book of Christmas stocking patterns, life will be much easier.

Under the Covers

The collection's 18 patterns are evenly distributed in difficulty from elementary to challenging.

You'll find everything from the whimsical (Nicky Epstein's snowman stocking) to the traditional (Lisa Carnahan's beautiful snow-patterned Gansey stocking). Novices or anyone in a hurry will enjoy Tara Jon Manning's Big Easy, which uses a super bulky-weight yarn.

Around the World

As with many Interweave books, care has been taken to represent different cultural and regional knitting styles.

Candace Eisner Strick's exquisitely detailed Austrian Alpine Treasure stocking borrows from traditional Austrian traveling-stitch motifs. Meanwhile, other stockings reflect Scandinavian, Celtic, Aran, Estonian, and Victorian-inspired motifs.

Freedom of Choice

The patterns don't call for a specific brand and make of yarn, which I happen to appreciate. Instead, they reference necessary yarns by weight, gauge, yardage, and general color.

At the end of the book you'll find a large list of yarn suppliers, and, wherever possible, the list includes URLs and email addresses as well.

Unbiased Selection

I congratulate Elaine Lipson, the book's editor, for following through on a good idea with an equally good collection of patterns.

While diverse in style, technique, and difficulty, the patterns are all clearly written, well illustrated, and easy to follow.

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Previous reader comments

"What a wonderful idea - as it's by Interweave Press I know it will be properly worked out. But I'll be lucky to get a copy for next year - I live in the UK, and as I don't have a credit card I have to wait until it turns up in UK bookshops. But it will....." freyalyn, 10/26/01