Chipmunk's Christmas Stocking

As kids we had the most amazing(-ly tacky) stockings. My mom ordered them all hand knit for me, my siblings and my cousins. I was pretty sure they were the best thing ever and they have been faithfully holding our goodies from Santa ever since.

Ready for this photo of 80s goodness?

Fast forward a whole bunch of years and I had been married for a year and realized it was time to get the hubs a good stocking. Lo and behold, my knitter friend found the same pattern and whipped up one for him!

The following year Goose came along, and my knittery friend had a little one of her own, so I trolled Etsy and found someone to make me one.

Last year I dug out my siblings stockings and put together this Christmasy delight:

So earlier this summer I went looking for that seller only to find that she no longer has a shop. Not good. Other sellers made the same pattern but it was going to set me back $100. Understandable for a hand knit treasure but I had a hard time ponying up that much for such tackiness. 

My next thought was an obvious one: I can do stockinette stitch so how hard can this be? I found the pattern on Mary Maxim and got to work.

There was lots frogging (like how I throw around knitting terms? It means ripping out.. Rip-it, rip-it... Get it??!). And research on intarsia vs stranding. I went with a (poor) intarsia job.

But I learned a lot: how to do multiple colors, mattress stitch, duplicate stitch, weaving ends (which apparently I didn't do) and how much I dislike knitting with acrylic yarn. And this is really acrylic, like buy it by the truckload for $2 acrylic. Which also luckily means I'll have enough to make stockings for all the woodland creatures in our family to come!