Slipping onto the Bandwagon with Felted Feet

A month or so ago, I kept seeing a thread in the Ravelry Patterns forum entitled "French Press Felted Slippers" which I interpreted (without reading the thread) to mean that someone was using a French coffee press as a device for felting slippers. You'd think I would have read the thread, just to confirm such an oddity, but I did not.

A while later, the Yarn Harlot posted about discovering a pattern she was all over called French Press Felted Slippers, which it turns out are felted slippers designed by a woman who designs under the moniker French Press. They were supposedly a super-fast knit (90 minutes!), making them ideal for Christmas gift knitting.

It also turns out that the slippers were very cute, so I bought the pattern via Ravelry (as did hundreds of other people), and cast on with Patons Classic Wool in red. Either I was paying too much attention to the streaming video on my laptop, or I'm simply not a turbo-fast knitter, because the knitting took me about twice as long as the 90-minute claim. Of course, I was also practicing a new method of Continental purl, so that may have had something to do with it. (A new method I am now insanely happy about, but which I will save for another post. Or maybe an Ask a Knitter column. We'll see how it goes.)

At any rate, I knit the pieces, and then (as is often the case) had no fortitude to sew them together, so they sat for a week or two, little rolled up tubes of stockinette, on the floor of my office.

A few days before we left for Sedona, I decided I needed to finish up those slippers so I could wear them around the hotel room. I sewed, I felted, I let them air dry for a couple of days, and then I packed them in my suitcase, along with the decorative buttons, planning to sew the tabs on when we got to Arizona.

Here they are, felted, but unfinished.


When I pulled the slippers out of my suitcase, I realized I had forgotten to bring any yarn or thread with me with which to sew on the buttons. Lucky, lucky me, the hotel was fancy enough to have pre-threaded needles in a sewing kit, right there in the bathroom. There was just enough red to sew on the tabs at the wide end. I used the brown to sew on the buttons through both layers of fabric.



I wore them the entire time I was in the hotel room, then packed them in my carry on luggage for the flight home so that I could wear them, rather than my UGG boots, on the 3-hour flight.

I love these little slippers. My winter footwear consists mostly of UGG slippers and UGG boots. My UGG slippers are bulky and keep my feet warm, but I like to fold up my legs while I sit, which is somewhat problematic with slippers as sturdy as the UGGs.

These little babies are nice and soft and pliable, like wearing an extra-thick, but stylish, wool footie.