slipper madness

Finally! Here's the photo of the completed slippers with feet in. As I mentioned before, the girls were pretty freaked out at how big they were on their feet.

The slippers were knit with size 13 US needles (16" knitpicks circs). The pattern called for size 10, but I needed a 13 to get gauge. This was odd because I'm usually spot on for whatever the pattern calls for. Oh well. I used Cascade 220 yarn, I don't remember the color numbers & they don't do names. As you can see, one pair was red and the other was pink. LOL

If I do them again (and it is likely that I will), I'll consider making the next smaller size for them both. Unless I really need the larger size to get the right amount of felting, this size just seemed crazy big and it took forever to shrink them down.


That said, here's the finished item. Well, mostly finished. They are still a bit large, mostly in width. I'm considering another round of felting to see if I can make them fit a bit better. The straps seem way too long. If I use them to make the shoe fit better (in the width), the girls will need to button them all the way at the sole/floor. That seems a bit too much.

Of course, I could shorten the strap, but I'm just feeling that something isn't right here. Either I've got incomplete felting, or inadequate felting or I just knit up the wrong size and this is the best these will do for now. Maybe I just measured the girls' feet wrong. I did it about 5 times to be sure I was right, but who knows. I'm still thinking about it.

On Monday I went on a field trip with the second grade class. They went to the Lively property. The name is intriguing during the week of Halloween, but it is simply a property that was donated to the school district to teach children about their environment. I say "their environment" rather than "the environment" simply because it was not a big GREEN place (although it was green), it is just an opportunity for urban kids to learn more about life 100 years ago or so. There's a museum of old farm equipment, an old classroom, a spinning wheel (looked like a modern Ashford castle style, missing some parts) and about 40 spindles (top whorl) for teaching, a BIG basket of raw wool (smelled lovely- the kids thought I was crazy sniffing the wool), and an old wood burning kitchen stove, etc.

All of the schools in the district are given raised plots to use. In the spring students come out and plant vegetables, in the fall, different classes come out to harvest. This is what we did. You can see my oldest showing off a carrot she picked. We harvested a HUGE amount of potatoes and carrots, a few beets, squash and cucumbers. The kids will be making a stew/soup on Thursday or Friday with the vegetables that they picked. It was a really nice opportunity for the kids. I was surprised how many had never even been for a walk in the woods before. I mean come on, we live in the Pacific Northwest. You pretty much don't even need to drive anywhere to find a wooded area.

Good grief.

We also made a scarecrow (sorry I didn't manage to get a picture of the finished thing, they put the parts together in class rather than at the property), pressed some apples for cider (though they weren't allowed to drink it because it wasn't pasturized) and went for a walk on some nature trails. There was also a nice lop-earred bunny that they could pet & a another one hopping around the property that was a constant distraction.

It was a lot of fun. The day was a bit damp, but not too bad, and fairly cool, but not freezing. I had fun, but needed a quiet place when it was all over (about 5 hours with about 60 kids - 7 year olds). I don't know how teachers do it. They deserve HUGE salaries.

I' m just saying.