Socks, socks, socks, and slippers

These are my 9th pair of socks, knit with Stahl sche Wolle Socka Color yarn purchased about 20 years ago for gloves never knitted. I used Wendy's toe-up, short-row heel pattern. They're excellent with blue or black jeans and my Birkenstocks. These next two pair are now in the possession of my sister and BIL. Knit from the purple & gray Opal Batik previously blogged, they came out well and please their new owners. They look a little sick against the gold-ish carpet. This is a better representation. Lurking behind socks numbered 10 and 11 are these felted clogs knitted for my sister. She and the green fuzzy feet never got along well but she wouldn't give them back so I could wear them! The solution was a trade: new slip-ons with non-slip soles for the fuzzy feet. We're both happy. They already have a crumb on them! The suede sole didn't require any "special" tools. I used a hammer, nail, ruler, and block of wood to punch holes at half-inch intervals around both soles "pinned" together with binder clips. Both just barely fit on one rectangle of Tandy Suede Trim Piece #4040 purchased at Joann because we have small feet (5.5 US). The difficult part was getting them sewn onto the clogs; the threaded metal tapestry needle got stuck in the felted fabric; I ended up using pliers with taped jaws to pull the needle through. Here you can see the stitching. The pattern is Fiber Trends Felt Clogs (AC-33), an oldie-but-goodie I hadn't tried before. It's a keeper!

Wooly Garden and Triangular Dolly

Sometimes I get a kick out of being weird. Well, most of the time. LOL For example, my vegetable garden started out on wheels. Now it's on the old pickanick (remember Yogi?) table where it will be easy to find those baby zucchini before they become monster-sized.


After planting a zucchini, several lemon cucumbers, and a cantaloupe (which I hope will recover from my letting it dry up too much) in potting soil and compost, I covered the dirt with wool.

What! you say? Wasting wool on gardening? Not really. That wool wasn't going to do anyone any good for crafting anything nice. The batt was dyed with something that bleeds profusely even after a dozen washes. It was also felted, probably accidentally judging by the various thicknesses and holes in it. As mulch, it will hopefully be keeping the soil moist and the roots warm. Water flows right through. It was easy to install.


See those buds? Baby courgette will hopefully follow.

I mentioned wheels. Because I did nearly everything bass ackwards, I had the washtub planted before I moved the table to the best location. So the washtub was on wheels for a while so I could move it around easily. The wheels? An invention of my own:


Three salvaged swivel casters pinning three sticks into a triangle. The sticks are about 20 x 1 x .7 inches with holes in both ends. The holes are barely big enough for the caster stems, and the slight angling caused by the over/under layering of the sticks puts just enough pressure on that it stays together. I hope. I did play it safe and wedged a small nail alongside each stem. Have you noticed how it looks kind of like a recycle symbol? LOL This simple little project definitely qualifies as Reduce (back strain) and Reuse (sticks, casters).

Now that the wash tub is on the picnic table (thanks to Louise and Mattie who went for a walk and passed just in time to help lift it onto the table), my triangular dolly is under a stack of tires. It is so much easier to move stuff around with wheels!

Extreme Knitting

I was just reading this and followed the link to knitter/shepherd Christien Meindertsma's site where she shows something of the process of knitting very large things with very bulky hand-felted yarn knit on very large needles. Kind of like this:


The feet on the rug and the artist look disproportionate, don't they? Clicking the car icon opens this series about felting the mega bulky yarn. Other icons link to knitted items for sale, archives, and vintage knitting instructions.

I wonder if Ann and Kay at Mason-Dixon Knitting and Christien are aware of each other's giant yarn rugs?

Harry Potter and the Dyeing Knitter

JK Rowling gave a holiday gift to her site's visitors last week, or at least to the ones who could find it! The Harry Potter Lexicon have directions and much discussion if you're interested.

The name of the 7th Harry Potter book is apparently going to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. After cruising Onelook and Wikipedia, I'm currently of the opinion that the Deathly Hollows are the horcruxes themselves and/or their locations. My reasoning? Hallows as a noun is defined as holy or saints' relics or the shrines holding them. Now holiness and saints aren't part of the HP storyline, but relics certainly are, and the horcruxes are deadly in their creation, potentially in their destruction, and for Voldemort in their absence during the final confrontation with Harry. BTW, these are my own thoughts, thunk up all by myself before glancing at hp-lexicon.

Now for KNITTING content! Last night I started a pair of Fuzzy Feet for myself. The pair I made for my sister turned out pretty well and I wanted to keep them for myself but lacked another gift idea or time to knit another pair. Here they are felted:



And here they are before felting, shown with an ordinary sock for scale:




Made from Knit Picks Sierra in Lettuce, they came out very roomy because the yarn is thicker than the pattern calls for. BTW, canvas shopping bags make good "roughage" for felting. But not fringed throw rugs (ask me how I know!).

The pair for me is made from two strands of Lion Fisherman's Wool, part of which I dyed with Wilton dyes. Here are the results from that dyeing day:



I used the two purple hanks as stripes in the cuffs of the "natural" colored wool. Tell me, what natural wool needs a dye lot number??? Before and after pictures to be taken. The slippers are 7/8 complete, an accomplishment achieved by watching NCIS and 4 installments of Taken, a pretty good 10-part alien abduction saga produced by Spielberg and others. No wonder I got so far on the slippers last night!