For many years now I have been wearing a great pair of shearling slippers that missbedora gave to me. They have been abundantly warm, as is evidenced by the fact that I managed to wear a big hole in the bottom of both slippers. Yes, right through the leather. There is almost no wool left on the inside of them, and they are sadly not as warm as they were in their former glory. So while I have loved these slippers (thanks hun!) they are being retired to greener pastures.

Which means that I needed a new pair of slippers. I like to be able to wear my slippers with bare feet, so I needed something that would be fitted but with no seams or weirdness inside. Enter the French Press Slipper pattern!

This pattern has gone RAMPANT in the knitter world, and there is a reason why. It is well written, super pretty and functional. It doesn’t cost a lot for the materials and you can really customize them to your taste.

Mine were made with Patons Classic wool, because when I checked out some of the 2700+ pairs on Ravelry, the Patons seemed to have a better felted look than my usual Cascade 220 go to. There is something about grey felt that I love, so that was an easy choice for me.

Once I knitted them, I was going to use a friend’s top loader to felt them, but I did a little reading and figured I could do it myself in the kitchen sinks. I filled one sink up with nearly boiling water, and kept the kettle going in the background. I filled the other one up with ice water. I added soap, the dish rack and the slippers to the hot sink, and starting beating the daylights out of them with a potato masher. Every so often I plunked them into the ice water, added more boiling water to the other sink, and repeated the process. All told it took about half an hour.

I think the big benefit of doing it by hand is that you can really control the amount of felting. If you see a spot that needs more, you can just work that with your hands a bit. And I was able to take them out of the sink and try them on a lot, so I got a perfect fit.

I seamed them up at the shop WIP finishing day yesterday, and Natasha was kind enough to let me raid her awesome button stash for a couple of really cool ones.

Don’t they just make the slippers?

The only thing I have left to do is put either puff paint or some suede on the bottoms of these. They are darn slippery on the hardwood floors. From one pair of wool slippers to another I go!

As the weather rapidly improves in Roanoke (it’s going to be 71F today, woot!) I thought I should knit up a little something for the spring.

Enter “Romi”, from the newest Berroco Weekend book. I did this one in a pale blue Weekend yarn, which is a cotton blend. I don’t normally like knitting with cotton, because it hurts my hands, but I definitely liked this stuff.

The neck has a pretty little yoke detail that you pick up after you have assembled all the pieces.

I think what I was most pleased with is how well it fit. Just one of those knits that works out just perfectly.

It was supposed to have some little tabs on the sleeves, but I decided I wanted to skip those.

It’s on display at the shop if anyone wants to come see it. I can’t wait to get it back.

Jenn’s little guy turned one (already) a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to make him something fun, durable, and throwable without damage to his sister or other things. Looking through the toy patterns on Rav I found this little guy.

Isn’t that cute? I had the perfect yarn in my stash, and the best part of this pattern was NO SEAMS!

Pattern: Goldfish, by Susan Dennis.

Yarn: Knitpicks Shine Worsted in Sunflower

Needles: US5

I love those fins! He seemed to like it too, although it might have been the tissue it was wrapped in.

Fishy lips.

I received a couple of comments on my last post that I should not have posted the quilts I saw at the show without the quilters name. As I did not write down the names of every quilter, I have removed the post. I apologize for my mistake, it won’t happen again. Live and learn!

Yes folks, that is Laura and I standing beside our blue ribbon winning dress. We won “Best Amateur Entry”! I am still in shock. Can you tell we are excited?

What a great weekend we had. I really didn’t understand the size of this quilt show. It was HUGE. We had a great time wandering around checking everything out. I will post some of the unbelievable quilts soon, but here are some of the other wearables that were in the competition with us.

This piece won the best in show award. It was so masterfully put together. The picture really doesn’t do it justice. The quilting on it was stunning.

And this piece won the viewers choice award. My camera really doesn’t do this one justice either, red is so hard to photograph. It was such a pretty shape.

As Laura and I have never been in a show, we learned a lot about how the competition works, what kinds of things display well, and I think I picked up some tricks on construction if I decide to do something like this in the future (like buy a serger. BTW – does anyone know of some good references for learning how to use a serger and what to look for when buying one?). This will be the only time that we are able to enter as amateurs since we won this year, so I am not sure if I will enter again or not. The competition at the professional level is really stiff. But we shall see.

In the true spirit of a quilting weekend, Laura and I even busted out the sewing machines in the hotel room.

Laura is making some quilts for a charity event, and I told her that I would give her a hand.

If the hotel had not been packed floor to ceiling with other quilters, I might have been concerned about disturbing someone. But as it was, I am sure our neighbours were relaxing to a familiar sound.

Thanks to Laura, her stepmom Jeanne and her friend Clara for a wonderful weekend. You are just a great bunch of folks!

I can’t wait to show you all the quilts we saw. Stunning.