What's the Rush?

December 29, 2006

I've been enjoying reading other bloggers' posts about their holidays - what they did, what went wrong, the old and new family traditions, the cool gifts they got and gave. This holiday season has provided quite a bit of blogging fodder in my brain, which may or may not all be coming to a screen near you.

I've been thinking that I need to rush, rush to get these fodder-thoughts written and published, since the hoiday season is coming to an end. Then I thought, "What's the rush? The observations I've made over the holidays will still be valid if I don't get them posted before December 31st. The gifts I got and gave, and the reactions, laughter and hugs will remain long after the 12th day of Christmas." Um. And so on. Maybe this is some profound change in my psyche. Maybe it's just a rationalization for not posting in a while. Either way, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So, for now I'll just share pics and stuff about the felted slippers I made for my mom.


Feel free to ooh and aah over the quilt they're on...






Yes, Virginia, owning a denim wardrobe is apparently a hereditary trait...


The pattern is from Lucia's suite of online pattern generators, using the ugly cute slipper pattern. These slippers were made on the ISM. They're self-lined, custom-fit and wonderfully satisfying.

Other details: I used about 1 skein of Paton's Classic Merino in "Denim" for the slippers. I had made a swatch first and felted it as much as it (the swatch) would shrink, then used the resulting row/stitch count to plug into the gauge fields in Lucia's generator. I needed to stick in a pair of shoe sizers (1.99 at Wally World, btw) to make sure that the slippers didn't shorten up as they were drying, but overall the sizing I got from the generator was pretty accurate. Oh, and I used a little bottle of dimensional fabric paint in denim blue to make some non-slip squiggles on the bottom of the slippers.

I did, as usual, modify the pattern a bit. I left off sections 1 and 6 (shown in the pic on Lucia's pattern page) to make the slippers more slip on-ish.

I think that when I make the next pair (and yes, there WILL be at least one other pair) I'll widen out the tip of the toe a bit. Other than that, I'm happy. Mom's happy.

And it isn't a HAT.

Labels: felting, knitting

permalink 3 Comments:

At 12/30/2006 10:45 AM,  Anonymous Babbled Back:  

I love those slippers, even though I myself don't care for felting. Great job

At 1/02/2008 3:43 PM,  TracyKM Babbled Back:  

I remember reading this last year, LOL. ANd thinking, how did you use the generator when you're felting, but you gave the answer. I don't suppose you could give the gauge you got so I could try it out without having to do my own swatch...I have a big bag of Patons Classic Wool, but mostly single balls of colours. I've made several FiberTrends clogs but they take a LOT more than one ball! And you have to hand knit them :( LOL.

At 1/02/2008 4:02 PM,  Fiber Babble Babbled Back:  

The felting gauge I finally got (the second time around - you'll want to check out my post
about the gauge for these slippers for the ugly truth) was about 6.5 spi and 9.75 rpi using Paton's Classic Wool, KP4. That was heavily felted.

I need to clarify something here - I used a little less than 1 skein per slipper. Of course, if you have single skeins, stripes can solve all your problems!

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