Hobbit Shoes

  This is the before picture of my Hobbit Shoes.  The seams are all sewn and that’s one of my old sandals laying on the bottom to show how much bigger they are than my big sandal.

 

Of course as I was sewing them together last night I couldn’t find the pattern laying any where by my knitting chair and I was too snug and warm under my quilt in said chair with the winds howling outside and the minus 20 windchills to want to get up and go in the sewing room and turn on the computer and double check the sewing instructions for the Hobbit Shoes.

I remembered that you just held them WS together to stitch them shut but I sort of seamed them like I do sweaters  and pulled my stitches tightly – forgetting that that seam too and my seaming stitches would all felt up – I would not have needed to pull them so tight.

So I started with a short hot wash cycle and stopped it after the water drained to check on them (they were secured in a pillowcase during felting and some towels thrown in to the load).  After the first run through they had not felted much  – I wanted to make sure how the multicolored yarn would felt since I hadn’t used that before and didn’t know if it would felt at the same rate as my Cascade on the bottom.  It does so I changed to several heavy duty hot loads checking after each one, stopping it after the initial wash water had drained and skipping the cold rinse cycle.

And here they are drying.

It’s a lousy indoor photo since it’s gray and gloomy out this morning (and snowing and in the single digits) but I’ve got that pair of sandals I used above in plastic bags and shoved in side the Hobbit Shoes to shape them to the right size.   Now the result of having pulled my seams up tightly rather than loosely — your Hobbit Shoes get nipples on the toes where the end of the seam is – which just makes them even funnier.  If I had sewn more loosely the ends of the seams would have rounded out more.

These felted down to nice thick slippers which I think will be great to wear around the house (since I never wear shoes when home) and keep my feet nice and warm.  Once they are dry, they will get a shave with the sweater shaver to de-hair them and the colors will bright up a bit and I’ll take a better photo.  Now I just have to wait a couple days for them to dry completely.