First Pemberley Slipper

I'm back on track!

With my knitting, not my blogging, obviously.

I just took myself in hand and focused on the slippers.  Well, to be honest, I do have a pair of plain socks on the go. But just as sock yarn doesn't count as stash a plain stockinette stitch sock doesn't count as a WIP.

Right?

I started the first slipper on Feb 2 and finished off yesterday, which was about a week of knitting once I got going.

It worked up quickly, in the end, probably because it's small.

It hasn't been terribly difficult, either. Really, the hardest part has been picking up along the wee heel flap.

The flap is only 20 rows and you pick up 16 stitches and I could not squeeze that number of stitches into the allotted space for the life of me.

So I ripped it out and reknit it with a garter edge, thinking that works so well for my normal heel flaps it would work here.

It did not.

So I reknit it regular and just did my darnedest to get the correct number of stitches. Still, I was glad the heel flap was just a few stitches over very few stitches. I must have knit it three times sitting at Library Knitting last Friday.



Turned out I wasn't picking up my stitches in quite the same way the designer recommends, but I got them picked up and that is all that matters. Once I conquered the heel flap it was pretty smooth sailing. By Monday, just three days later, I was almost done the foot.

Which is pretty speedy, if you ask me, even with the lace and intarsia.

One thing I think I'll change on the second slipper is how I'm working the edging. By instinct I was crossing the colors to the inside of the sock, which is in theory the wrong side.

After the first repeat it occurred to me the lace would be folding over and the crossings might be visible, but I decided not to go back. Now that the slipper is done I don't think the fold over is enough to see the crossing.

However, I do think it is effecting the way the lace lays.

I think the crossings being on the inside are making the lace more like to stand up and roll to the inside of the slipper.

My hope is that by crossing them to the outside the lace will be encouraged to roll to the outside and lay flat.

None of which effects the lace that crosses the toe. That is very perky and I'm not sure how I can pick it up differently on the second slipper to get it to lay flat. However, if the rest of the lace is rolling out that might pull the vamp lace along.

Another momentarily tricky part was when I finished the foot and was ready to start the toe. The pattern says to pick up stitches along the vamp edging (which is the lace bit that goes across your toes) and my working yarn was on the opposite end of where the lace was attached to the slipper.

I finally realized I had to fold the floating edge of lace across to meet my working yarn. This totally makes sense when you remember that you are going to start working in the round at this point.

Still, I was glad I hadn't cut any of the yarn ends at all in case I had to go back.