I’m modifying this (I hope) to fit his 8” long foot. I couldn’t find an in-between size in her patterns, so I figure I’ll just knit the largest kids’ size a little longer and maybe 2 sts wider.

This is my first felting project (!!!!), but I’m optimistic because there are instructions for felting in a front-loading machine. I’d heard that it wouldn’t work, so I hadn’t tried felting because I figured it’d be useless with my machine. I’m excited to finally give it a try.

If this works out well, I may be knitting felted slippers for all the kids. That seems to be the way it works in this house: one of them discovers something new, and then they all want one. :)

Notes:
Finished size before felting: 11.5” long on sole, 4.5” wide across widest part of sole.

Specific mods made:
Made width 15 sts.
Went up proportionally in row length by one “size”: 40 rows, then 16, 16.
Picked up 46 sts along each side.

Made short rows longer proportionally, starting with 30 sts before turn.
(I also experimented with not wrapping on the second slipper because sometimes that works with garter stitch. It did leave gaps bigger than on the 1st slipper where I did both wrap & turn and conceal the wraps. I’ll see what the felting does, then decide whether to do that again on future slippers.)

About the felting:
I used my front-loading washing machine, a lingerie bag with zipper, a pair of kids jeans, and a tbsp of my regular laundry detergent.

Put it on the heavy duty cycle (hot water, lots of spinning), and they were the right size about 30 minutes into the wash cycle, with 40 minutes left to go.

I should have rearranged the slippers in the garment bag more often because they felted in kind of a patchy way. In some places, there are folds that are remaining wonky even after I reshaped them, and in the folds, the knitting is less uniformly felted.

Next time, I’ll use a solid pillow case, tied shut, to prevent getting lint from the jeans embedded in the slippers. Who knew old jeans would do that?

I think they’ll be okay, though, once worn in a bit. :) Pretty happy so far.