Outer space, rockets, and UFOs

Yesterday we took Colton up to DC to see the National Air and Space Museum. He is really into the planets, and he and Bill spend quite a bit of time looking at the NASA's astronomy picture of the day. For Christmas Colton's Uncle Ralph and Aunt Karen sent him a model of the solar system, a puzzle of the planets, and a very cool book on space. We've been having a great time with it, so this seemed like a perfect outing....apparently a few hundred dozen other families and several small countries thought so too.

The museum was a mob scene, but we we managed to score tickets to the Imax 3D movie on the international space station narrated by Tom Cruise. It was really amazing to see how it all worked, and quite inspiring to see how different nations collaborated to build this enormous orbiting ship.

The scale of these things is just amazing.



It was a long and full day, so my usually chatty boy was very quiet on the way home.


Since this is a knitting blog, you're probably wondering about the UFO I mentioned in the title of this post. Perhaps some of you remember Petra, the beautiful jacket from CocoKnits that's worked in one piece. I started mine about a year ago, and then got distracted by other projects (yes, it happens to the best of us). So yesterday morning, I pulled it out and knit on it while Bill drove up to the museum. Size 11 needles, it goes really fast. I only had a few inches done, but by the time it got dark I had done this much. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but as I mentioned, it's worked all in one piece, so this is the length on the back and the fronts.

Last night I bound off for the armhole, and today I started the sleeve. I hope to have it done by the time I re-open the shop Tuesday.

French Press Felted Slippers

I thought these little slippers were just about the cutest thing ever, and I ordered the pattern through Ravelry. This is the first pattern I've bought this way, and I must say that I really like it. They use Paypal, and you can use your credit card even if you don't have a Paypal account. Ravelry stores the pattern PDF in your Ravelry library for you to access wherever you are!

I picked up a skein of Shepherd's Wool in hot pink for my Katie and one in navy for my Elizabeth. The pattern is really easy and goes very quickly, as you might imagine, on size 15 needles. I happened to have a set of size 15 dpns in my bag (no idea why), and since you never have more than 15 or so stitches on your needle at a time, I decided they'd be perfect. You could, of course, use longer needles and work two sets at the same time if you wanted.

The Yarn Harlot says that it took her 90 minutes to knit a pair. While I didn't time myself on the complete set, I did find that I knit one of the sides in 20 minutes while I waited for Johnny at physical therapy. So, even if you consider yourself a slow knitter, it's fair to say that you could probably whip out the pieces for one slipper in about 90 minutes.

Here's a picture of Katie's right after they came out of the washer before I sewed on the strap.

Here I've pinned the strap and button in place. When I sewed the strap on, I placed it a little further down, over the vamp a bit as shown in the first picture of this post. I like it better this way.

Here's are Elizabeth's in navy with red buttons.

I made the pink one in the second size (7/8) and the navy in the largest size (9/10). Not a huge difference. You can control the size by stretching the slippers while they are still wet from the felting. I had each of the girls try on the slippers and let them stretch to fit their feet.


Each pair took less than a whole skein of Shepherd's wool, even though the pattern calls for 33o yards of yarn. I checked my gauge before felting, and it was correct, but even so, perhaps I knit a bit tighter than the designer. A very loose gauge is tricky to measure. Anyway, both girls are happy with their slippers. Now I need to knit a pair for myself - maybe rhinestone buttons are in order...