FO Thursday too?!?!? Yep!

Pattern: FiberTrends Felted Clog Slippers
Designer: Too lazy to go look…
Yarn: 2 Skeins + a little of Lamb’s Pride Worsted in Persian Peacock M124 and 3 skeins Paton’s UpCountry 80930 (discontinued)
Needles: Addi Turbo’s in Size Recommended
Size: Smallest Man’s Size
Recipient: Amber (my sister), Size Wm’s 11

I substituted a thick Lopi-like yarn (the Paton’s Up Country) for a doubled worsted for the soles and color of the slippers because there was NO brown worsted yarn to be had at the LYS when I was acquiring the yarn for this project. It ended up working out just fine. I did nearly run out of the Lamb’s Pride, but luckily had enough left over from a previous project to finish. Since they are just slippers I didn’t worry about dye lots and it didn’t seem to make a noticible difference in this project.

I did have issues with the weaving in of ends distoring the slippers, though that was mostly on the soles so I’m not worrying about it. They feel find, the edge of one just looks a little odd. I should shave these, but I’m suspecting my sister will need to do little additional hand felting to get them to match her feet so I’m debating. At this point I don’t have a sweater shaver (and well, I would like one, I have a sweater stone on my Christmas list with the in-laws so…) and don’t relish the idea of hitting the retail jungle on December 15th. So, we’ll see if I get somewhere that has them before I get the package ready to ship than great, if not, oh well.

Some gals at one LYS last year were discussing using the liquid latex for dipping tool handles in from the hardware store to put non-skid bottoms on slippers. I was thinking it would probably work even better to get a little texture to that so was thinking about stitching on some of the sticky, bumby shelf-liner stuff and them dipping them, but I’ve decided my sister needs to finish sizing them before doing that. So, I’ll give her a little certificate entitling her to have me do that the next time I’m visiting or she can just ask for the directions to do it herself.

This color combo is her favorite right now and I had been hoping to lcoate some flannel loungewear in that color combo to go with them, but no such luck. But, as it turns out this next week she’ll be moving into her own place once again so I’ll just stick a Target gift card inside of them so she has a little help in setting up house once again. I know how expensive it is to have to rebuy all those cleaning supplies etc. Plus, each place has different requirements in terms of storage solutions and such. I think it’ll be well recieved.

Here’s a bit better, but not so original look at the slippers…

Finally!

There they are. The FiberTrend’s felted clog slippers for my sister’s size 11 feet pre-felting. As the woman’s large said to size 10 I went for the smallest of the men’s size. The majority of the foot on those was stuffed with a t-shirt and not a normal size t-shirt. A plus sized t-shirt in each foot! :-)

Here are a few more shots to give an idea of how large these are…

Just click on them to see larger versions of them.

I was planning on felting these when DH is around seeing as his feet are closer in size to her feet than mine are. However, I’m thinking I’ll probably be impatient enough to felt them this afternoon. Plus, DH just isn’t around much these days with all the NANO activities.

I did do some spinning this weekend. I’ve found it is good for when I’m more than a little fed up with goings on around the house. But, I’ll post more about when I have the other 2 oz done and everything plied.

Gargantuan Knits!

I’m taking a page from Melanie as far as holiday knitting goes. Well, sorta. These were all in the queue before this post was made, but her post kind of spurred me on…

The big green thing is what I hope will be a slightly fluted rectangular felt basket with perhaps a slight turn over at the top. That said, I just flew by the seat of my pants on it without doing any swatch felting. But, I figured it isn’t a high science sort of thing. It’s three skeins of Lamb’s Pride Worsted knit doubled. If it turns out I’ll fine tune and write up a pattern probably. I’m hoping it will be roughly the right size for holding holiday cards as they arrive, but it isn’t for me. If it turns out as planned upon felting it will also be acting as a gift basket for one of the recipents of DH’s homemade cheese and liqueurs. See, I just designed the labels and occassionally had to remove the cheese from the brine and put it into the cheese fridge. But, other than that I’ve had no hand in it. So for family at least I want to contribute something handmade as well.

On the right, the peacock and brown huge thing is a single soled Fiber Trends Clog in the pre-felted state. I put one of my size 9 shoes in the shot for scale. Look how huge that slipper is! LOL! I can actually stick it on my head with my face peaking out the area for the seam in the middle of the sole. It would almost make a really cute hat/hood thing if it weren’t for the nipple-like toe sticking up out of your head, LOL! (okay, I come from a wierd family where we try a lot of things on our head if it looks like it’ll fit - sue me!)

I have the other sole completed and on the needle up at the top. But, I haven’t decided if I want to attach that one or just do the top part of the second one and do the soles later. See, the soles are definitely NOT television or movie watching WIPs with all the short rows and such in there. But, part of me wants to finish one and felt it and make sure I made the right size. See, my sister has size 11 feet, so I made the man’s medium, but I’ve since seen at least one post about this pattern with Lamb’s Pride and the need to go down a size on the pattern. But, won’t the clogs match better if they are felted together? And, if I did do the wrong size, what am I going to do with only one?? It would be foolish.

Oh, and the observant out there will notice that the sole on the needles is not attached to a double worsted yarn, but is instead being knit from a bulky yarn. I’m tempting fate here. I didn’t swatch and felt yet again and made a somewhat drastic yarn substitution. So, I may have two strikes against me on this one. That said, those two parts were both knit last Saturday. So, it isn’t like I’m thowing out a ton of time if things don’t work out.

The LYS didn’t have any brown Lamb’s Pride and that is pretty much their only worsted weight felting priced yarn so I went with this. It’s Patons some or other and is 100% wool. I don’t trust Knit Pick’s colors online or in thier catalog enough to pick out the proper turqoise/teal/peacock color I know my sister will like and I knew Persian Peacock or whatever it is called from Brown Sheep was going to be perfect. But, I think I shall be placing my first order with Knit Picks next week and will be sure to include a Wool of the Andes color card in that order in case I need to knit another pair of felted clogs for her. I’m a Knit Picks virgin, can you believe that???? Shocking, isn’t it????

I hope everyone has safe and enjoyable Halloween festivities this weekend!