Warn and Fuzzy Feeling

I am here to tell one and all of the best warm and fuzzy to give. It is called thrum!!!

I went to Stitches Midwest several weeks ago and discovered this. I almost bought a kit but didn't. (please don't judge me to harshly, I'm a kid trying to put herself and husband though college and knitting is a gosh darn expensive habit) My mom graciously tagged along with me to stitches and had mentioned on the way home that she would really like a pair of thrummed slippers. Well that lead me to do a search on thrums in raverly and there was a million free patterns!!! I found one for socks, altered it a bit to make slippers, a tutorial to make thrums, and got some roving on ebay and wool from the stash and voila, thrummed slippers for a grand total of $7. (quite similar to the mark down of text books by buying them online as apposed to in the book store)

My mom assumed they would be to warm to wear until the winter. But when she tried them on was surprised to find that they are not much warmer than regular socks. It has yet to get really cold out so we don't know if they will be warmer when it is colder out. Might turn out to be a all year round slippers. The big plus about these guys is they are so fuzzy soft on the inside. Slowly with use I'm told they will felt down but the picture above had been used several times already.

These were a quick knit, only taking two weeks. I used the two balls of clearance wool from Joann's (7 oz and had just enough for 6 tiny hats left) that I picked up after the fiber festival and get 4 oz of smoky roving and used about 1/2 of it. The adjustments I made to the pattern were:

1) I knit the ribbing back and fourth and did a plain rib instead of twisted rib

2) I held two strands together and used size 6 needles

3) I adjusted down to 40 stitches (I think but for the life of me can't find my print out to confirm exactly how many stitches I used)

4) I did the gusset wrong (this is not a suggested adjustment but one that I made) I had never knit socks before and didn't really know what to turn a heel or knit a gusset so I did my best to understand the pattern but didn't get it right (or i did and the pattern was written wrong but anyway) My gusset decreasing starts at the heel and works it way up, oops.

5) I thrummed in the heel