January 2016 seems to be a month of odd urges for instant gratification. So, when I was cleaning up the massive magazine collection and found these, I knew I had to make slippers in the height of summer!

I have to admit it was partially the colour combination that attracted me to this pattern so I went stash diving for blue and brown. The brown tweed is leftovers from Graeme Street Slouch and the blue is my last two balls from Smoked Camp pi. They look cool together (more than cool in fact) and are on the thin side for DK so not too hard to work double.

I found an error in pattern. In the set up for heel for Size 8 (the larger size). There are 44 stitches on the needle leading into the shaping. The first shaping row as written only decreases two stitches and leaves 42 on the needles. The pattern indicates 40 sts and needs 40 sts for the next shaping row to work. Instead of a straight knit row for row 2 of this section, I knitted K 19, K2tog twice for this row (40 sts).

OK, then I had a major issue when I got to inserting the waste yarn for the opening for the cuff. It seemed to be in the wrong place. A little voice in my head said, if you put the hole there, it stuffs up how the toe lies. Did I listen to the little voice? Not really! (I never do and always regret it later!) I did check my working from the pattern and was happy I’d followed it correctly. So I did the hat heel (Cool idea that) and completed the cuff and tried the slipper on and it fits and it’s gorgeous and the toe is all screwed up and twisted around and my knitter OCD is engaged big time. I’m going to have to frog it (or partially frog it) if I can figure out where the stuff up is.

The best way to figure it out? Knit the second one! So I cast on for the tab for the toe, and followed the pattern, increasing around according to the pattern. And then it hit me. I KNEW WHERE I HAD MADE MY MISTAKE on the first slipper. Yes, right at the beginning! I was a silly, over-confident, I’m an experienced knitter and I don’t need to use a stitch marker kind of mistake! in the first knit round without shaping, I’d assumed the yarn tail was the beginning of the round (AND IT WASN’T). So all the shaping from that point was out of alignment and we all know where that little error ended up… So Slipper one will be getting frogged and reknit…

Slipper two was a walk in the park except for some yarn chicken at the end of the cuff. I ended up with bout 1 m of the blue left at the end.

The re-knit of slipper one also went smoothly. (Except I had to use that little bit of blue yarn to complete the heel). The cast off is perhaps a little tight due to a spot of yarn chicken again but I’m really happy with the finished product.

This was a fun enough pattern to knit three times. (No second sock syndrome here!)