Adventures in felting

(... or I should call it "where in the h*ll is that &*%$ing tapestry needle!?!?")

Excuse the language. I just had a serious lesson in "Don't Believe it Will Necessarily Be a Short Piece of Cake When Everyone You Find Absolutely Loves This Pattern and Doesn't Have Any Problems With It." It's not even that I had any real problems with this pattern. It could totally be the fact that I don't like seaming things, I'd never felted before, the instructions were rather vague for someone in this situation, I kept losing the yellow tapestry needle under my rear on a colorful bedspread, and a 2 year old was trying to help. All that combined doesn't make for an easy process.

The pattern is "French Press Felted Slippers." You can find it on Ravelry and buy it on Etsy. I even follow the blog and you can find references there. In all honesty, the pattern is nice, true to size, could use some clarification on what "m1" technique to use (along with a mystery stitch marker on the sole that's not mentioned in seaming directions and only 1 stitch marker on the top while knitting but 2 stitch markers mentioned in seaming directions), and since it's felted you can just about totally do whatever and knit horribly and everything looks fine in the end. That being said, along with my personal situation statement above, I am refraining from any more criticism of it because the reason of my frustration might just be me.

That morning wasn't going well anyway and I realized first hand that not only did I have lots of curly noodle looking things (see Pic. 2) that were 2x the length and width of a foot (ah, the magic of felting), I had them in 2 colors because I was knitting 2 pairs. (I don't recommend knitting 2 of anything the first time you try it out.) It was nice because I used one pair as a "trial and error" pair and the second was "lessons learned" but even after felting they looked pretty much the same. It took several days for the slippers to dry once felted which was not my brain's allotted time for this to take. The brownish pair you see above is a demo for the knit shop and I had told her they would be ready Tuesday. I was doing all the seaming Monday, another lesson in not thinking in real time, not to mention allowing for the unexpected to happen. The needing to dry for several days was written in the pattern, I just didn't read that far when planning. Oops.

This one I had to pull out chocolate to make it through. For that I might thank it. I did finish the last few steps this morning and the puffy paint pattern on the sole for a non-skid bottom is now what is drying. Will have the final pictures up soon.