the most sincere socks

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‘Tis the count­down to Christ­mas, I thought I’d share a most sin­cere idea for the most prac­ti­cal gift. Who does­n’t need an extra pair of socks? Great alter­na­tive to choco­late cov­ered marsh­mal­low San­tas when you need to get an under $5 secret San­ta gift. 

The pom pom on top is actu­al­ly a fun fes­tive hair tie! I’ll show you how I made that as well.

I got a pack of 5 reused yarn socks from MUJI, they’re soft and love­ly (not to men­tion that it’s such a nice relax­ing expe­ri­enc­ing when brows­ing around at the MUJI store) and cost around $20 CAD, which rounds out to about $4 a pair. 

This is super sim­ple and involves things that you prob­a­bly have stashed away at home if you’re a crafter:

  • A new pair of socks in cup­cake colour
  • An elas­tic band
  • Light card stock or scrap­book­ing paper (I bought a sheet of gold metal­lic paper from Michaels for 99 cents)
  • Cup­cake wrap­per tem­plate (there are tons of print­able tem­plates out there, I can’t seem to find the one I used >_<, but this one seems just as great)
  • Scis­sors
  • Scotch tape
  • Mug of tea (essen­tial!)

Here we have our pair of socks, and the elas­tic band.

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With the socks stacked togeth­er, fold them in half length­wise. The heels will stick out but that’s ok.

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Start­ing from the cuff end, roll up the socks.

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Secure the sock roll with elas­tic band.

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Have a sip of tea. Trans­fer cup­cake wrap­per pat­tern onto the back of card stock / scrap­book­ing paper, and cut out the pattern.

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Wrap the wrap­per around the sock roll, and secure with a piece of tape.

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Repeat with all the pairs of socks you’ve got and set them aside.

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Now we make the pom pom hair tie :D 

I used: 

  • A fork
  • Small amount of red worsted weight yarn 
  • Small amount of spark­ly sil­ver yarn (for a fes­tive touch)
  • Scis­sors
  • Hair elas­tics
  • Fab­ric glue (great to have, but not essential)

Using a fork to make small pom poms isn’t my orig­i­nal idea. There are a few tuto­ri­als out there, like this one from Eskim­i­mi Makes.

Basi­cal­ly, you would wind the yarn around the prongs of the fork (as you can see I used two dif­fer­ent yarns, and I cut off a length of the sil­ver yarn for wind­ing, rather than wind­ing direct­ly from the skein, to make things easier)…

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… after you’re done wind­ing, cut yarn. Then cut a length of red yarn about 6 inch­es long, and tie the yarn around the mid­dle by thread­ing one yarn end through the base of the 2nd and 3rd prongs of the fork, and the oth­er yarn end between the 2nd and 3rd prongs at the tip.

Trim the pom pom but leave the tying yarn long.

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Using the tying yarn, tie the pom pom to the hair elas­tic with dou­ble knot. Apply a dab of fab­ric glue (if you have it) to the knot to extra secure it.

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Here we have our cup­cake top­pings! I also bought these adorable straw­ber­ry bells from Etsy sell­er Mim­iLo­lo, I attached them to cell phone charm hang­ers (not sure if they’re called that, but you know what I mean), thought they’d make great zip­per pull or fes­tive back­pack orna­ments! :D

If you know that the gift recip­i­ent won’t like hair ties or zip­per pulls, a sim­ple Toot­sie Pop might make the best alter­na­tive topping.

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I pulled the hair elas­tic / cell phone charm hang­er through the mid­dle of the sock rolls using a cro­chet hook.

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Ta-da! The most sin­cere socks of them all! Linus would be proud. (see It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown)

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I put some of them in recy­cled pack­ag­ing from gift soaps.

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And I made a flat-bot­tom gift bag with wrap­ping paper fol­low­ing this tuto­r­i­al. I then fold­ed the top down, punched two holes at the top through all lay­ers, thread­ed a fan­cy string through and tied a bow.

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Have a sweet week, everyone! 

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2 thoughts on “the most sincere socks

  1. Eh bien, en voilà une excel­lente idée! Votre tuto est très bien fait, très clair, mer­ci. Je ne con­nais­sais pas cette façon de réaliser des pom­pons, par con­tre on peut aus­si ‚avec une fourchette réaliser de tous petits noeuds de ruban.

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