Don’t Do This.

Two Christmases ago, I made my beloved husband a pair of felted slippers. He loved them with an enduring passion. They went on his feet every time he came home and it was even somewhat cold. They went in his knitting bag when he was on the go. My husband loves having warm feet, and I love seeing anything I made get that much wear. However, it was unsurprising when he wore right through one of them a few months ago.

This didn’t stop him from wearing them, but I knew there was something I could do about this problem. It seemed silly for him to wear hole-y slippers around the house. Besides, I had a theory.

My theory was, if I were to darn over the hole, and felt the slippers a little more, the slippers would shrink a little and the patch would shrink to become part of the felt. The slippers were on the big side, so Jared approved this plan.

Now, if you know anything about felting, you are already biting your nails. It is never advisable to make a felting project out of two different brands of yarn at all, because they may felt at different rates. And to add un-felted yarn (of a different brand) to an already felted project? There is no telling what might happen! But, I reasoned to myself, if the patch doesn’t work it’ll probably just pull a bit, or sag, and I can just cut it off. Thus, this conversation happened:

Jared: “Well, what are the chances the slippers would be ruined forever?”

Me: “… Very low.”

So I darned the hole with a most excellent darn, using some leftovers from the Bag End bag. See that darning job? Naomi was so impressed I could barely get them away from her to photograph.

Into the washer they went, right along with the Bag End bag. The verdict?

Well, the ironic part is, the patch worked.

The brown patch integrated perfectly with the existing slipper, and the slippers shrunk to the perfect size for Jared’s feet.

What I didn’t realize is that felting the slipper more would cause other parts of BOTH slippers, which were weakened from wear but had not yet developed holes, to rip wide open. I didn’t have the heart to photograph them when I took them out; my husband’s precious slippers looked like a blue volcano that had spewed fuzzy blue puke all over my pretty new bag. The above picture doesn’t look so bad since Jared STILL won’t be dissuaded from wearing them, and it’s only the outer layers of the two-layer soles that were affected. But my mission of extending the life of Jared’s favorite footwear has failed, rather epically.

Next time I’ll just darn and let well enough alone.

P.S. Of course you will ask, can’t I just make him another pair? Sure. So could you; do you want to? No thanks; hubby has asked me for different knitwear this Christmas, and his parents for down booties.