Ruthless Knitting Archive

The winner of the Ugly Slipper Contest, who will receive these beauties here . . .

. . . is Jeni!

Jeni might strike some of you as a dark horse candidate for the slippers, since she snuck her entry in at the end, and she didn’t write a poem. But Jeni was clever in ways that you may not have noticed. Her entry read: “You should give them to me because: (1.) I actually like the color combination. (2.) I also wear an 8.5, the felting will be easy. (3.) You won’t have to pay shipping, you can send them to work with David.” Do you see what she did there? She began by appealing to my vanity — I love how so many of you claimed to “like” or even “love” the slippers — and then quickly moved on to cater to my laziness and cheapness. And it worked! On Saturday morning, when I was ready to felt, I did not want to have to wait to find out the winner’s shoe size, and this alone vaulted Jeni to the top of the list. Well played, Jeni! Your slippers will be making their way to you shortly.

Here’s the obligatory pre-felting Giant Slipper Picture, with my feet for scale:

And this is how the second pair turned out:

I finished them in the nick of time — yesterday, I had to throw out my original slippers, as the holes in the sole were beginning to merge together to become a giant hole. The new slippers seem to be working out as a suitable replacement.

I’m not going to do a finished object post for the slippers, since I’ve made them before and have no observations of significance. Instead, I give you the Clif Notes version: I used Nashua Creative Focus Worsted for the ugly pair and double-stranded Andes yarn with Peace Fleece Worsted for the other pair. I used one pair of size 13 needles and figured out that I don’t need a second needle for the three-needle bind-offs on each slipper, because you can just poke the first needle through both stitches at once and bind them off. That is all.

In other news, I got the buttons I ordered for the Middlebury cardigan, but they’re all wrong. After moping around the house for a while, convinced that I am doomed never to finish that sweater, I asked Melanie of Earthenwood Studio if she could reglaze them darker, and she said she would try again on some new buttons, which I consider to be beyond the call of duty. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I started a new sweater a few days ago — the third one in the Ruthless Knitting Fall/Winter 2007 collection, for those of you who are keeping track. Here’s my sketch:

This will be herringbone only on the front, with a slipped-stitch vertical stripe type thing on the sleeves and back. I may add elbow patches, as well. The cuffs and bottom will be hemmed, with the facing in the contrast color. I’ve started on the first sleeve, and my progress so far has been slow but satisfactory. Here’s where I was yesterday; I’ve since made it to the 6″ mark.

I’m using light sportweight yarn from Beaverslide Dry Goods for this sweater, and I’m knitting it on US size 2.5 (3.0 mm) needles. I’m getting about 7 stitches to the inch, which makes this project somewhat like knitting a gigantic sock. This morning, I’m blocking what I have managed to finish so far in order to make sure I don’t have any big gauge catastrophes. One thing I’ve learned about fine-gauge knitting is that small errors in gauge calculation become terribly magnified, so it’s important to get it right the first time.

I expect this will take until about Christmas to finish, and I will probably need to do some small projects in the middle to take the edge off once I get bored, but I’m hoping I can at least finish the first sleeve before that happens.

Happy Halloween!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 7:08 am and is filed under 2007 Collection, Design, Finished Objects, Projects in Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.