News Flash: Wool Shrinks!

I am a knitter.  I taught myself to knit when I got married  - lo! back in the 70's - when we lived in Eureka, CA.  My husband was finishing up college in Arcata and because we were only there for winter quarter, I couldn't get a good job, so I became a domestic goddess.  I knit, I embroidered, I needlepointed, I attempted cooking, I read a lot.  In essence, I went slightly mad.  Wow, I could have had a great blog if only computers and the blogging universe had existed back then.  Ah, well.

Anyway, I had a baby and knitted him and his little cousins baby things until we moved to Casper, WY and I got a real job.  No more time to do much of anything except work and yell at the kid, so I ceased knitting.  Flash forward thirty years to my retirement.  The Golden years, such as.  I happened on, purely by chance, a small group of like-minded women who wanted to learn to knit.  A couple of us already knitted or knew the basics, so we began to meet every week and in one of those lucky coincidences (yeah, yeah, I know - there are no coincidences) we all gelled, bonded, became buddies.  Call it what you want, I call it a remedy for insanity.  If our group was harnessed to a time machine, we would be ruling the universe in some distant, yarn-filled hegemony with dominance over the less vocal craft alliances.

Back here on Earth, however, we do alright.  We knit a wide variety of items, but lately we have all (or mostly all) decided to knit felted slippers.  I resisted felting for a long time because I had a bad experience with wool early in my marriage.  I'll preface it by saying that I grew up in the sunny south where sheep are only good for lamb chops.  If I ever owned a piece of woolen apparel,  I've forgotten what on earth it could have been.  I vaguely remember that my uncle wore wool suits in the winter, but I never became acquainted with the material on an itchy, personal level.  So imagine my surprise when I married a Western outdoorsman who was inordinately fond of wool shirts and coats and socks and mittens and hats...you get the idea.  The man liked wool.  Pendleton wool is a primo variety of the genre and they make beautiful shirts in lots of pretty plaids and solids.   Uh, and they shrink when you put them in the hot water cycle.

To this day, my husband washes his own clothes.

When my knitting group explained to me that I would need to shrink a woolen garment upon which I had lavished attention and time - not to mention money for Cascade 220 - I was horrified.  I could still hear the wails of dismay coming from my young husband's mouth.  Nope.  I don't think I'll go there.  But they insisted that they'd help me, encourage me and tell me how wonderful the slippers were - even if they shrunk up small enough to fit my whippet, Lucy.  Yeah, right, I thought.  But I did it anyway.  The slippers knitted up like a breeze but looked really strange and BIG.

The photo doesn't show how much bigger the slippers are than normal-sized feet, so perhaps this photo will clear up any misconceptions.

That is one big slipper, and very fashionble.  Of course, my knitting group didn't think so.


Once I finished knitting the slippers, grafted on the double soles so that they would be cushy and comfy, it was time to felt.  I ran a tub of hot water in the washing machine - with just a skush of detergent and two bath towels for extra agitation - and threw them in...with my eyes closed.  If I had been a praying woman, the ceiling would have been plastered with "Please, please, please don't let them become doll slippers."  Instead, I just pestered the hell out of them by opening the top of the washer, pulling them out and gasping because they were dragged out to a yard's length by the weight of the water.  And, my skush of detergent produced a buttload of bubbles that turned the slippers white with lathery soap.  Not going well.

Finally, I threw up my hands and left them alone for ten minutes or so and was amazed to find that when I came back to check on them, the felting process had begun.  They weren't as stretchy - still about six inches longer than my feet - but smaller than a sombrero.  Each time I pulled them out, I tried the wet, woolly-smelling things on my feet.  This wasn't my favorite part of the process because first I had to strip the soap off, wiggle my feet into the slippers and try to imagine if they would be the correct size when they dried off.  It was a touch and go process - putting your feet into wet, clingy sheep-leavings.  Takes a lot of imagination to get past the undeniably weird idea that wool shrinks.  I mean, does it shrink on the sheep?

When I was finally satisfied that I had done as much as I could to create footwear out of yarn, I took them out, stuffed the toes with paper and placed them in front of the fire to dry.  The next morning - Voila! - I had slippers.  That fit.  That looked cool.  That I loved!  Yay.  And here they are.

Now that I've felted one thing (or rather two things), I think I'll felt something else.  A purse, maybe, or a tote.  Or Mittens or a hat.  Or even more slippers.  But first I think I'll dance in these for a while.