I sidle into the room to be greeted by three cranky ghost-like figures glaring at me, 'oh you must be waiting to hear the end of the duck feet story, I am soo sorry, well I finished them, posted them and received a fabulous unexpected gift in return. All done now, moving on'.

Then I came to America, to Flagstaff, to hang out and play many, many board games.  Favourite so far is Shadows of Brimstone, my character is a feisty saloon gal, Miss Ruby, who loves doing damage to the  creatures that lurk and ambush and there are many expansions of the game so could keep us going for a long time.

Also have been trying out new little point and shoot camera, my first picture was of this acorn woodpecker on the power pole out back of the house then the communications array on top of Mt Eldon, also from the back balcony, I am impressed with the zoom.

Then there is the foster puppy, she came here all fur and bones and is  fat and happy hoarder now, sadly we only have her for two more days and hopefully she will find a great home.

Nearly forgot the wool day of dead cowl kit I ordered, promised to show Rubysquee, I am nearly half way, apparently watching Netflix and knitting is a 'thing' according to a facebook post so I am right
 up there.

 All for now.

I am such a bad blogger but you haven't missed much.

The feet finally dried, took three days, they are not very heavily felted, one can still see the stitches, a bit floppy, using a pattern with different yarn is always tricky which is why I like making up my own things, however they feel quite nice and comfy.

Here they are, nearly dry, hanging on the wardrobe door to let the air circulate.

I had a few days of doing other things then started the cuffs, have finished one, this is the second one and must admit my cast on here is much neater.

Woot, nearly finished!

Another wet, cold day so a felting we will go.

My methods lol-

you have to use jeans or something heavy to agitate, I use these great cotton mats, they are heavy, do not shed or loose colour and they are great agitators.

My machine if fairly old and well used, but if it ever stops working it will have to be replaced with a very basic model, no fancy smancy for me, I need total control, if I can't control the world I will make do with a washing machine, I am easily bought as flopearedmule has mentioned.

Some say to run items through a couple of hot/cold cycles, I don't like to use that much water, (even if  a lot of it is in puddles outside), so I continually take things out of the hot water and throw into cold water, then back into machine, if water starts to cool I boil the electric jug and add that, as was the case this morning,

oh felting starting to show

Realised did not want to cut up shower curtain so traced onto plastic, by the looks of this we are close.

ok, must confess here I tried one on my foot, (9.5wide), a couple of times to really check size and decided the work was finally done,

Soaked them in this Felting Finish and Wool Wash that Rubysquee gave me for Christmas, haven't used this before but it is supposed to do all good things to our slippers. It smells nice.

They will takes ages to dry this weather so don't expect to put the cuffs on until the weekend but I am very happy with progress so far.

A good mornings work :-)

There is nothing like several days of rain to let one knit without guilt. Unfortunately the coast has been battered with wild weather and high seas, here inland the rain just fell quite gently and kept on falling and it was ccccold outside.

On Sunday I was up to working the applied i-cord on the 'toes', there is a lot of this and my hands did not thank me.

Last night the first part of the process was finally finished, now they will be felted then the cuffs worked afterward.

Firstly there was a little bit of prep, trace the slipper into my trusty white shower curtain so I can see the changes, just for interest, more importantly traced my foot so can measure when they are done shrinking. One can always felt more but there is no going back, it looks like they might not need to be heavily felted. I use the shower curtain because it doesn't mind getting wet.

I have to be here for the whole thing and as I am in and out for next two days  I will get to the feltin' as soon as possible and will have the results then-always a bit nervous before hand or before 'foot' shall we say.

I have done a fair bit of knitted felting over the years, mostly hats and bags for the markets, I am old and lazy now and only do things for special people.

It is fascinating because never sure of results, yarn felts differently, colours change and shapes can be erratic.

Last year I wondered how an entrelac pattern would felt and used some purple and grey wool, you can see the partially felted bag, then the finished one, decorated with the lovely purple and silver buttons, I could  not get the colour right in the finished one, I am a knitter not a photographer ;-),
This bag now lives in Cocoa Beach, Florida, pause for envious sighs.

PROGRESS

Hi there Ampersand Duck, I can out you now you have posted a comment.
It is not surprising that with a blog name like that one would be drawn to any duck-like objects.
Last night I got to this point.

This morning binge watched a second series disc of Earth Final Conflict and knitted to this point.

An object lesson in taking colour photo's, the top one is more true to life.


A little blog about blogs.

Started this one way back before first visit to the USA.
I kept a daily diary then and posted EVERYTHING, then on my second visit I posted the highlights, and lots of food. Last year I was there again and nothing, nada. Not because it wasn't great but facebook took over and it all disappears so quickly on that site.


Now, if you have come across here not knowing me at all, I must say I have three awesome daughters, one of whom lives in Arizona, so that is why I go visiting so often.
More soon.

Duck Feet



This all started a little while ago when a facebook friend posted a pic of the cutest duck feet booties and wished for an adult version, being a bit intrigued I wondered how I could do it and following links discovered the hard work had already been done by Jenny Staiman and her felted pattern was a free download on Etsy, how awesome.
Deciding to have a go I thought this knit along was not a facebook thing, everything there is too ephemeral so popping over here to my sadly neglected blog.

Last Friday I began the project as follows.

Step One - gathering supplies.

One reason I even thought of this as a possibility was having some yellow feltable wool in my stash.

Then I downloaded and printed out the 12 pages of pattern.

Found the correct size circular needles, I love that patterns from American are happy to tell us we need US#8/5mm but no one sensible is going to convert length, which is why downunder knitters and quilters etc have to be bi-lingual in Imperial and Metric and hang on like grim death to measuring devices in both genres-or whatever it is called.

Collected the other bits and pieces.

Had a quick glance at the pattern and had to find tutorials for Judy's Magic Cast On and Turkish Cast On, both of which send me into palpitations, do not use them enough to maintain any sort of competence.



When that was all done I went off to read some more of James S. A. Corey's 'Cibola Burn', cause being in a whole 'nother galaxy seemed the thing to do next.


Saturday 

Saturday was the day winter really kicked in so perfect day to knit, unpick, knit unpick, casting on 4 stitches with magic cast on then adding to sides with Turkish cast on sounds simple, I had several fumbly fingers so I gave it away and played 'puter games.

Sunday

Started early an full of determination and it all started to flow again, this is where I am up to and will be doing some more today-I hope.