the good, the bad, and the ???

The good:

Daniel's starry hat is finished and he loves it! I will do a proper FO post once I get pictures of him wearing it and can write up the instructions. For now, you'll have to make do with a quick selfie I took of myself wearing it.

The bad:

My failed test knit. Oh, how this one hurts. I have never had a test knit for Thea go wrong before, but this sweater just isn't working out. Here's another selfie, this one from the bathroom! I think I'm the only knitter who has failed the Paloma Cardigan so far, so I blame only myself and not the designer. Instead of the Bulky O-Wool called for, I used Blackstone Tweed Chunky (discontinued now) because I had it stashed. The Blackstone Tweed is lovely and soft and the right gauge, so I thought the subbing would be fine…but alas, no. Something wasn't right. The body of the sweater is too loose, the sleeve is too tight, and the whole thing doesn't hang right. It's possible I can reknit this whole sweater a little smaller and salvage it but for now I can't bear to look at it, let alone frog. Once I take the tweedy mass out of time-out I may turn it into this pullover, which will hopefully be a little more flattering.

'

Lastly, the ???:

Back in February, when we were cursing the cold temperatures (wait, we're still cursing the cold temperatures! Oh, spring, where art thou hiding?), I decided to whip up some felted slippers. I had just bought The Knitted Slipper Book (because Clara Parkes loved it and I'm just a huge fan girl of Clara Parkes) and my feet were cold, so I started out with Trim Clogs. This pattern requires you to make two pairs of slippers, then felt them, then nest one inside the other as a liner for dual warmth. The knitting itself didn't take long, though it was stretched out over a few weeks since I kept putting it down for other things (like the two projects pictured badly above). Then when it came time to felt, I tried it in the sink by hand for about 20 minutes before I ran out of patience and stuck all 4 slippers in the washing machine with a towel on the hot cycle.

Oops.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Felting is a gamble. Obviously, if I want slippers of my own I'll have to start over. But if my kids want slippers, they've got 'em! The green ones felted smaller than the brown (note to self: Knitpicks WOTA and Valley Yarns Northampton do NOT felt the same way!), but they are now so dense you probably wouldn't need the double layer anyway. My other option is to embellish both pairs a bit with some beads and/or embroidery and donate to the school's auction, since my children prefer to be barefoot indoors anyway, even all winter long.