FO: French Press Slippers

Pattern: French Press Felted Slippers by Melynda Bernardi
Started: December 18, 2009
Finished & Felted: December 20, 2009 (around lunch)
Flaps & buttons sewn on: December 23, 2009 (dry in the p.m., thank God)
Gifted: Christmas Eve
Yarn: 2.75 skeins of Elann Peruvian Highland Wool (109 yards yds per 50g ball; 100% Highland Wool) in color #2010, "Raspberry"
Size: Women's 5/6
Needles: US #15

I knitted these for my sister and gave them to her on Christmas Eve afternoon. She seemed to really like them when she opened them and I was so relieved that they mostly fit her--one slipper is perfect while the other is just a little bigger. She told me she wore them all day on Christmas and her husband's family really liked them. It makes me so happy that she's happy with them!

I read that they only take 90 minutes to make but I didn’t find that to be the case. They were more of a “weekend knit” for me, quick but still time-consuming. It took me a couple of days to knit them, most of Sunday morning to sew them together, about 45 minutes in the laundry room to felt them, three full days to dry them, and then the flap and buttons still needed to be sewn on. They were fun to knit and the color is really pretty in person; I'm happy with how they turned out, even though they aren't perfectly symmetrical, and would like to knit another pair.

[I really need to get better about deadlines though. I cut it close again, mostly because they took so long to dry. I learned from the baby sweater though, and dried them on the dining room's radiator with the curtain trapping the heat in around them. I'm not sure if they would have dried otherwise...]

I had to pilfer buttons from another knit because not having buttons the day before gifting something counts as a “knitting emergency.” With my sprained foot and the pushy last-minute shoppers, I couldn't make it to the button stores or craft stores. Sharon is going to puffy paint the bottoms herself to make them grippy.