Today, boys and girls, we are going to learn about the wonders of felting. What's felting, you ask? It involves mussing about with wool until it shrinks itself (nay, felts) into a tight and warm fabric*. What does this have to do with webmeadow, you ask? Wool keeps up warm here at webmeadow HQ, and felted wool keeps our toes especially warm. Besides which, felting is awesome.
* You may also remember felting from its starring role in the smash hit, "Oh my god, I put my favorite sweater in the wash and now it fits my cat".
When you want to make felt slippers, start with a nice pattern like this one from Fiber Trends. (Special note: that was a really hard pattern to find on their website, even though it's one of the most popular! What's up with that? Fiber Trends, call me! We can help your website!) This pattern has great double-thick soles and knits up really quickly. I made one whole slipper in just three episodes of Doctor Who.
When you are done, your slipper will be HUGE. Immense, really. I was able to fit the whole thing on my head like a pope-hat. But then you stick it inside a pillowcase, put it in the washer, and voila! Because of the structure of knitted fabric, it shrinks way more length-wise than width-wise, and it ends up normal-slipper-sized (about a men's 9, in this case). In shrinking, all of that wool gathers together into a super-dense fabric that is really warm and quite lovely.
At webmeadow, this is how we keep our toes warm in the face of oncoming winter. That, and thousands of cups of tea. We have yet to resort to snuggling with the ducks for warmth (they don't really mind winter at all, except that their pond freezes over), but you never know. Time will tell.
