AuburnChick's Adventures

Ugh.  Sometimes being a knitter around Christmas is not a good thing.

Oh sure, people will make comments like, “You’re so lucky.  You can just make things for people.”

Yeah, right.

That sounds like a good plan if you start in August.  However, when you start a project the second week of December and expect to have a wonderful gift by the 25th, you should always have a Plan B because, as we all know (or have learned through trial and error), things rarely go as planned.

Enter in my brilliant idea, which I got after reading this, posted by the Yarn Harlot.  These would be the perfect gift for my mom!  I was so proud of myself and patted myself on the back for being so smart.

Why, oh why does the Yarn Harlot make everything look so easy?

I mean, I was realistic in my expectations.  I knew that if she only needed 90 minutes to knit an item, I would need a week.  I know what I’m capable of.

But hey, I can knit.  I can purl.  I can seam (thanks to the frog project I recently completed).  I can most certainly felt (think back to the oodles of booga bags I’ve made).

I eagerly bought my yarn, using coupons to buy both skeins…

The directions were tres easy too, with all pieces knitted up in a few days (taking into account something called Life, which got in the way, time-wise).

However, the seaming…well, what can I say…it was a royal P-A-I-N.  But, I had read about this too, and I thought I had psyched myself up to face the challenge.

Sunday night was to be the big night…Felting Night!!

The slippers appeared to be doing okay.  I could see the yarn doing its thing…losing stitch definition.

Things were progressing along nicely.

Until…I pulled them out for the last time, figuring that 20 minutes in the washer was enough.

First of all, the slippers looked too big, still.

My mom has itsy bitsy feet.

Great.

One look at the “straps,” and I knew I was sunk.  They were misshapen.

Ugh.

I tried setting them out and shaping them with newspaper stuffed inside plastic bags.

This trick did not work.

I put the slippers on my shoe dryer to speed the drying process.

When I pulled them off, oh, they were dry.  But I still had huge issues.

They didn’t look anything like the picture in the pattern (which I had to pay for, by the way)…

The slippers had a couple of big problems:

Problem #1 – Which ends were the toes, and which were the heels?

Problem #2 – Which slipper was the left, and which was the right?

Together, these problems equaled U-G-L-Y.

Sigh.

This is what I get for allowing myself to think that I had the knit-know-how to pull this off.

But, I had little time to feel sorry for myself.  I now had an extra present to buy.

Enter Plan B.

Thanks to developing savvy shopping skills over the last few months, I snagged a box of tea from Bed Bath & Beyond, using a $5 coupon in the process.  I added a teapot from an antique store downtown, and the gift set was complete…

Poor Mom.  I think this will be the third teapot I’ve given her in the last two years.  I think I have forced her to start collecting them.  Oh well.  Plan B is better than nothing.

I think I’ve learned my lesson though…or maybe I will have learned it.  We’ll see as I try desperately to finish one last gift.  Stay tuned!

Filed under: Knitting | Tagged: christmas, Knitting, slippers, yarn harlot |