Felted Clogs

I know, I know.  You keep tuning in to see progress on my colour block sweater. Friday I promised you  progress stories on Monday.  Instead, come Monday,  I told you about my yarn crawling adventures.  Today, yet again, I am opting out of the  progress report  (If you are beginning to think there is  no progress, you might be right) to tell you about my soon-to-be-felted clogs.

 Recently, several of my knitting friends have been struggling with Bev Galeskas famous Fiber Trends pattern

 

trying to knit felted clogs.  When they asked me for help, I had to admit, I hate that pattern.  Well, hate is a strong word but the pattern is definitely not my favourite.  Sure, I love the finished product.  What I dislike  are all the words. 

I realize that paper size and number of sheets of paper are all restrictive issues that designers must address when putting their ideas to print.  But still.  Knitters, I think, need patterns that provide information in an   easy-to-see-at-a-glance, format.  After all, we are doing two things at once. Knitting and reading.  Make it easy, please,  Miss Designer.

Not being of any help to my friends trying to decipher the  roughly 250 lines of instruction

 (come on  - it's slippers,) I decided there was nothing for it but to re-write the pattern.

My knitting time, these last few days has  been taken up with  that project. Instead of line-by-line 'blind-followers' instructions, I have re-written the pattern so that the knitter is told where they can expect to end up and how to knit their way there.  Then I let them go to it.  My version reduces the centre 104 lines of pattern info to 19.  That is something a knitter can read at a glance. 

And as a result, I have a great pair of slippers, ready to be felted.

 

Tomorrow I will share this info with my friends and hopefully the felted clogs will begin to roll off their needles.  While they do that, I will start Colour Block. Promise.