Finland
Population:
5,374,781
Number of people super excited at the moment:
5,374,781
Number of people super excited about winning Ice Hockey World Championships:
5,374,780
Number of people super excited about my new felted slippers:
1
I'm in a slight minority here. While the rest of the Finns celebrate victory over our hockey-enemesis, the Swedes, I'm rejoycing after finishing another pair of felted slippers. These ones are without question the prettiest I've ever made! When I even think of my slippers I find myself smiling like a split wiener, they've brought me joy far greater than is reasonable to expect from foot wear.
The pattern is the same old from Novita's Anne-Maija Immonen (see my translation in
English or the original in
Finnish) but what makes these ones so special is the embroidery. I normally start loosing interest in knitting around spring, knit-wise I hibernate practically the whole summer. But mixing things up by adding a bit of embroidery to the plain old knitting makes it all exciting again.
The embroidery is made with DMC Pearl Cotton (doubled) using 3 shades of purple on the flower and mixing 2 different shades of green on the vine and leaves. The motif is completely improvised. I'm not much of a stitcher and my needle work isn't very refined or exact. But the great thing with working with thick felt is that you don't have much of a chance to redo the stitches (at least without fear of making a mess), forcing one to just let go and have fun with it, come what may. The key to success here is being fearless in one's spontaneity, the work is easily ruined by over thinking or -planning, as it may lead into overly cautious (=boring) results.
To top the whole thing off I sowed seed beads at the center of the flower in 3 shades of purple and green 2mm bugle beads on the vine and leaves. Perfection, if I may say so myself.
I've got heaps of feltable scrap yarn, left overs from dozens of slippers I've made. One evening I decided to use it all up and made little knitted felted purses. The plan is to add cute embroidery to them all.
