Slippers

I'm really surprised to be sitting here feeling like writing.  It's unexpected and mostly because I have had a few days to get myself right with my world again.  Not that all the babysitting isn't fine, but that is their world not mine. In a few years, my little grandchildren won't need me so much and it will be I needing them.  They will be busy as is the way of growing children, so I will take it now and treasure it.

I've been missing slippers for a while now.  The leather bottoms of my socks turned slippers had disintegrated in the wash and though I had once knit heavy socks for the day that happened, I seem to need a pair of heavy socks.  I was loath to lose my favourite pair.   I yearned for a good pair of slippers. 

When I was knitting the mittens for Cassie's Mitten Tree, I found myself really liking the density of Kathmandu Chunky knit tightly.  It's a sort of dense yarn blend, and knit tightly, it was as if your hands warmed just looking at them.  I couldn't get the thought out of my head that this yarn might make really warm slippers.

I woke yesterday morning, feeling like the world was my oyster.  It may have been the Baileys in my coffee but the world was my oyster.  It was great but for one thing.  My feet were cold.  I usually just put on some socks, but not this time.  

This time, I grabbed the bag with the yarn, dug out some dpns, sorted out a pattern or rather a plan, and just got on with it.

I had read several patterns and the ones I kept coming back to looked so easy even if they were cuff down and needed sewing at the end.  I really liked the purposefulness of them, the ordinariness of them but I really did not want to sew, and I really did not want to have to graft the yarn if I didn't have to.  Plus a toe knit and finished the way it is in the pattern doesn't fit me well. So I took  The Simple House Slippers of Simone A. and turned them upside down.  Sort of.

I grabbed two strands of leftover Kathmandu Chunky and started with  garter toe,  rectangle in this instance.  It is the easiest way to start a toe and it certainly fits my rather squared off toes.  Then I knit around the garter stitch, just like I would for a sock till I reached my instep.  I started knitting back and forth then in garter stitch till the whole shebang was just at the back of my heel.  And then I did the same thing as a heel turn, a straight sided heel turn all the way up the two sides of the garter stitch and knit a handy little pull tab and voila.  Slipper.  And before the end of the day slipper two!      

And now my feet are warm.