Christmas stocking - miniature version

A friend in my informal knitting group has had a rough last few months. She's 70 but you'd never guess because she is usually just as energetic and spry as they come. However, she was ill for a little while and eventually needed surgery where they removed part of her colon, and the road to recovery is long, slow, and painful for her. She is homebound right now and is getting pretty stir-crazy. So, as her knitting friends, a few of us have set about helping her decorate her Christmas tree. This is my contribution:



It's a miniature Christmas stocking of my own design. I made it yesterday while Daniel was sleeping, which probably means no knitting today while I catch up on the paper revisions, but I don't regret it. Sometimes, a friend in need is more important.

Yarn: Dale of Norway Heilo in red and white, leftover bits in the stash
Needles: size 4 DPNs
Pattern: I just kind of made it up as I went along, but it's basically a generic sock, only tiny
New techniques learned: picot edging. I just googled "picot edge cast on" or something like that to find instructions.I've never tried it before, but I love it! And it was so easy! Except for when I had to knit the provisional cast-on along with the regular stitches, which was a huge pain on that tiny project, but at least I didn't screw it up too badly.

I hope she likes it.

Now, off to work on this blasted dissertation. Why is it that the last 1.5% seems to last forever? Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that I spend naptime putzing around knitting. Certainly not.