Not so hot - or misadventures with felting

Challenge number 3 for Iron Craft was "warm up", which is what Kat wanted to do, given it's February, and she's in Minneapolis.

Of course, down here in the Great Southern Land, it's summer - so warm is what we already are. And, although we've just had our wettest January in a decade, and it hardly seems like we've had a summer at all (not many hot, dry days), the January average of 26.1C is above the historical average - and it's the 12th consecutive January of above average temperatures.

Still, winter is a comin', albeit slowly, and not packing the kind of punch she does in Minnesota. And I shall require slippers when she gets here.

So, via Pinterest, I found these:

Crochet version from mommyknows.com

which had a link through to a knitted version:

Knitted version from craftzine

I went with the knitted version because I knit faster than I crochet and I wasn't sure how much of what was left of the two weeks it would take to make them. In retrospect, I could have done either version in the time.

I was surprised at how little of the yarn in my disturbingly large stash looked likely to felt. Who knew that all that soft, yummy Zara was machine washable? (I never machine wash anything hand knitted. I grew up with hand-washed hand-knits and it feels wrong to do otherwise.)

Anyway, I discovered some Cascade 220 which I thought would fit the bill, and knitted and felted a small sample square to give me a rough idea of how to adjust the pattern.

For what it's worth, I went with 15 sts and 24 rows on 6.5mm needles. I have a fairly average sized foot - a 38 in European sized shoes.

They aren't felted nearly enough - way too much stitch definition still showing. But, if I keep felting till I'm happy with how they look, I'm going to have to find a six year old to give them to.

Rosa does not approve

So I kind of wish I'd either:

• gone with the crochet, because I think it might have felted better - the stitches would create a more uniform surface than garter stitch so less felting might have been OK
• made it in stocking stitch, for the same reason. To do this, you'd need to make a paper version of the L-shaped pattern to work out which bits needed to be right sides.
• or just made the damned things bigger :).

From memory, and this yarn has been in the stash for awhile and adrift from any ball bands, the colours are:

• green 8903
• blue 8905
• cream 8505

Meh.