Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The last of the Slippers (for a while)

As much as I am enjoying the mindlessness and quickness of these slippers, I am done for a bit. My MIL's slippers turned out just as well as the other pairs.



All 5 pairs followed similar modifications as the initial pair. For smaller feet, cast on fewer sts for the cuff, knit fewer rows for the tongue.

An interesting little tidbit I discovered while knitting these was how the yarn behaves when unwinding from the ball. Bear with me while I lay out the background info...

For my slippers I used centre pull balls that I made on my KnitPicks ball winder. I pulled from the inside and outside of the same ball, even though the pattern recommended against that. The pattern suggests winding the two yarns into a single ball before beginning knitting to make yarn management easier. For both B and M's slippers, I again flouted the advice and decided to knit from both both balls. I considered winding into one ball, but not wanting to wind the balls by hand, and knowing that my ball winder wouldn't be able to handle winding 8oz of worsted weight into one ball, I didn't. For the second slipper for each, though, I thought I'd try it, since the yarns were twisting and I had to stop every so often to untwist things. Other than providing the cats with half the opportunity to bat yarn balls around while I slept, this method did not seem to help with the twistiness. I still had to stop and untwist the yarn.

So here's the tidbit. Use it if you can: When working from both ends of the yarn, it miraculously did not become tangled! I decided to do the same for G's slippers and happily knit along with no tangles. This is why Grandma's slippers are only one color too: makes my life easier!

I'm not certain this would work with a store wound ball. They don't sit nice and flat when unwinding from the outside, but with those wound on a ball winder, it's magic!

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