Friday, February 05, 2010

A little bit of this....

It's weird, I know. When I don't feel well, I get all kinds of creative. I mean my brain works overtime. Maybe it's because I get much needed rest. Maybe it has to do with bad daytime TV, but it never fails. Once I'm well enough to manage it, I start doing all kinds of things. Several years ago, I was home sick for several days, and I beaded enough flower broaches for a garden. I was just bangin' them out one right after another.

The first week of this year, when I wasn't hiding under my comforter, I did some knitting. Here are the results:


On the left French Press Slippers. I saw them on the Yarn Harlot blog, and they were just too cute for words. OK, not that cute, but I liked them, and I have a weird fondness for anything that's felted. (Which is why, I'll never buy a front loader machine no matter how much better they are.)

When I saw them I had the brilliant notion that I could use "waste yarn" to knit them. Goodness knows I've got loads of wool ends. Well, the best laid plans and all that. You'll notice that the "straps" are rather bumpy, that's because I used two different yarns. A planned deviation. My problem occurred when I didn't have enough of the same yarn to FINISH half of ONE toe!! So you may be able to tell that the inside of the right toe is also bumpy. That's because I had to go snag a skein of Lamb's Pride from my LYS. Sigh....best laid plans and all that. Nonetheless, they came out really well, and they're warm....really.

You knit them in "strips" and frankly when you have all these loopy loo pieces to stitch together, you're sure that these will NEVER look remotely like slippers. I shouldn't have worried. It's a great project to work on when one has a few moments. The yarn is held double (triple for the sole) and you use a #15 needle. So next Christmas....slippers for everybody!! I already have another pair (for me) ready to be felted. Probably tomorrow morning. I do my best felting in the mornings....




Number 2 on the hit parade is the Brooklyn Tweed Scarf . I used two colors of Noro Kureyon. I was an easy peasy fun knit, even when I REALLY didn't feel well. I soaked it with hair conditioner, now it smells like Pantene, spun the water out of it, then just let it dry. (I use Pantene because my hair didn't like it and I don't know what else to do with an almost full bottle.)

It's fun looking and warm and I'll be wearing it this weekend in our Nor'easter snow storm.

Looks like we're going to miss the worst of the weather again here in Central PA - only 4 - 8 inches through tomorrow. Trust me, I'm not complaining. Hope those of you to the south and east manage to make it through.....

2 comments:

kemtee said...

Oh, well done. I'm not a felter, but I do like those slippers.

Mag said...

Both slippers and scarf are wonderful.
(I did a little math and came up with an astronomical figure that was possibly earned by French Press Knits for that pattern alone. Based on FOs on Rav and the cost per download, carried the repeats and twisted the denominator... =$$$) Oops, it's not "cool" to talk about money and knitting in the same breath. ;-)