Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Easy Knit Gift Idea: Felted Sailor Slippers!

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It feels like it’s about that time of year as I write this, where you’ve either abandoned all hope of knitting all the holiday gifts you had planned to knit, or you just decided, like, yesterday that you wanted to knit some gifts. 

If you’re in the second group, or you just want to make something quick and easy to gift that person you don’t know what to give to (or even to have a gift you can pull out if some random person comes to your house with a gift unexpectedly) here’s an idea for you: felted slippers. 

The felted Sailor Slippers by Annie Germain are quick and easy to knit in super bulky yarn on size 11 US/8 mm knitting needles. 

You start at the heel and work flat throughout, with a few episodes of picking up stitches, casting on and working mattress stitch to sew parts together. The opening is finished with applied I-cord and then the slippers are felted. 

The pattern includes a variety of sizes ranging from UK 3 to 12 or EU 36 to 47 (that’s about a women’s 5.5 to men’s 16.5 in American sizing, or women’s 5.5. to men’s 13 in Australia). So how do you pick if you’re knitting a gift? I’d hit somewhere in the middle if you don’t know the person’s shoe size or if you’re not knitting for a particular person. 

Hopefully you know them well enough if you’re knitting for them to know if their feet are exceptionally large or small and you can adjust accordingly. Of course if you’re making them for yourself or a family member you can knit to their actual shoe size. 

These slippers are meant to be striped, and the designer has a coloring page on her website so you can plan out your colors if you like. 

The pattern is rated for advanced beginners because of a few techniques, but there’s nothing too difficult here. 

[Photo: Annie Germain]

Have you read?

Learn a Flower Bobble Technique to Knit a Fun Shawl

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier. 

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project. 

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible. 

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge. 

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects. 

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy. 

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project. 

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Xandy Peters]