I am always optimistic when I start knitting. I’m pretty fast, so when I do run into problems, I just undo and repeat.
I did a lot of that Monday night. I was trying to downsize the pattern I’d written and between stopping to pick up my pen and trying to keep track of where I was, I made slow forward progress. It doesn’t look like a slipper quite yet, but I’m on the rows that make the length of the foot, so soon it will look like something.
I forgot how much smaller an 8″ foot is from my 9.75″ one–I’m used to looking at mine so I consider them average. Turns out in something like a slipper that has less stretch than a sock you really need to have more than two sizes. It makes sense, but as someone who hasn’t had a small foot since I was about 10 years old, it didn’t occur to me until I sent Catherine a prototype to try on. She said she swam in it, but thought it really cute.
I agreed to make this almost a year ago. The original design I had was really cute, but just too complicated to make at a small scale, so I abandoned that, and pretty much abandoned the project, except for the odd moment when I’d work on it, then put it aside. I’m not a sock person, so it really just isn’t my thing. But I kept thinking about it, and eventually worked out the issues I as having. Then it became a matter of sitting down to write the pattern, then trying it out.
As I said, I made a prototype and sent it to Catherine. Suddenly, after looking at the yarn she’d provided, I became interested and anxious to get the project completed. While we were waiting Wendy made some awesome charts for the short-rowed heel (no pick-ups, really easy). I made some adjustments as I refined the pattern and was raring to go after I got feedback on the fit.
She called as requested, but couldn’t give me any help on the fit because it was too big. I had to go back to the pattern and add a third size! And of course adding that third size made things just a little more complicated from a pattern-writing standpoint. I wanted to keep the stitch pattern I used in the sole properly lined up the length of the slipper, and of course the shaping makes for a moving target. But I’m going to send the new numbers to Wendy to put into the pattern and I will finish the knitting and they can shown off in the Red Barn Yarn booth at TNNA.
The yarn is a cashmere-merino blend, worsted weight, dyed by Red Barn Yarn. The color is pink tourmaline. I’m going to embellish the toe with a bit of something using the leftover Salem she dyed Straw that became the Hill Country Vest (available in February).
Leave a Reply