A few times as a child, I remember going out to a tree farm as a family a couple of weeks before our holidays to chop down our vision of the perfect tree. Walking through row upon row of trees grown just for this purpose until we found just what we were looking for. These days, I rather enjoy going to our local greenhouse instead and choosing our tree from row upon row of trees hung from the ceiling of the greenhouse.

The pattern is written as a cuff-down sock, with a forethought heel (just like an afterthought heel, but with waste yarn in place so you don’t have to cut into your sock). It can be knit toe-up with some minor manipulation of the charts and instructions.

As with most colourwork, you can adjust the fit by adjusting the gauge (by going up or down in needle size) and you can go up to sport or DK weight yarn on a larger needle, if desired, for a larger foot size. The smaller needle sizes listed above are for socks, and larger needle sizes are for the stocking.

I’ve included 2 stitch counts for this sock, giving greater flexibility of sizes once you factor in needle size, gauge and yarn choice.

I’ve included charts for light trees on a dark background as well as dark trees on a light background to more easily match up with yarn choices.

I’ve included a set of basic instructions for making a felted stocking version of the pattern using the same charts as the sock.

In my sock sample, I used 220 yds of light blue and 140 yds of dark green on 2.75mm needles for the colourwork section, to fit a 9.5” foot, knitting the smaller size.
Light Blue: Murray & Co. Wool Goods in Festive Frost
Dark Green: Murray & Co. Wool Goods in Evergreen
Heels, toes and cuffs for my sample were done on 2.25 mm needles.

Alternate yarn suggestion: Knit Picks Stroll has some lovely colours at an affordable price point.
A 50g skein of each colour will suffice for up to size 9 in the smaller size (longer sizes with manipulation of the colours on heels, toes, cuffs) and a contrasting mini for heels, toes, cuffs will stretch this several sizes.

In my stocking sample, I used one skein each of two colours of Topsy Farm Pure Sheep Wool 2 ply with small amounts left over. The first picture of the stocking is pre-felting. The second picture is post-felting.