As Christmas approaches, so does the deadline for completion of my Christmas knitting. God help me. I got three more presents done in the last week, and all three went out in the mail this morning, thank you Jeebus. My brother’s and my mom’s were pretty easy, although I injured myself on my mom’s several times (no details yet, because Mom reads the blog. And Mom, chill, this was an easy present. I haven’t really done your big knitted gift yet because you said do everyone else’s first. So I am.). My sister-in-law’s though…I thought I was going to die.

I decided to make my sister-in-law a nice pair of felted clogs. Everyone raves about this project, it’s on big needles, guaranteed to go fast. And it did. I enjoyed knitting them greatly. It was the felting part that I have a strenuous objection to. The directions say to put the clogs in the washing machine. Problem: I don’t have a washing machine. So I figure, “Oh, it’s okay, I can hand felt them. Stick them in a bucket of hot water with some towels for friction, use a potato masher to agitate them, it’s all good.” Famous last words.

I filled a bucket with hot water, stuck it in my bathtub. I put in some Soak knit wash, a couple of hand towels, and the clogs. I mashed it with the potato masher. For ten minutes. I took the clogs out. No noticeable felting happening. I tried a different technique, using my hands as the agitator. Ten more minutes of leaning over the bucket, I looked at the clogs again. Some felting. Okay, we were getting places. I switched up between the potato masher and my hands, because goddamn that is tiring. Ten more minutes. Some more felting, but nothing substantial. I put the iPod on the sound dock to break up the tedium. I agitated some more. And at this point, let me tell you that I have glass doors on my shower, which means the side of my bathtub has tracks for the doors on them. I was sitting on a towel to cushion those tracks, but after half an hour, I was starting to feel a little bruised on my posterior from them.

I stood up, thanking god and goddess for my small feet, and started doing my impression of the grape-stomping episode of I Love Lucy, one foot in the bucket swishing everything around, the other foot in the tub. Ten more minutes, and I was getting bored as well as tired of felting. Looked at the clogs. They’re a little more felted, but not shrinking down to a size 8 any time soon. See, that’s the thing about felting: felting is basically shrinking down your knitted object, in this case on purpose (as opposed to that time you accidentally stuck a sweater through the washer and dryer and ended up with a sweater fit for Barbie). So you need to start out with a gigantic knitted object for it to felt down to the right size. After forty minutes of felting, these things still would have fit Big Foot.

I went and got a beer. I felted for a half hour more, with various checks on the progress of the felting. Damn thing was going sloooow. Finally, after an hour and twenty minutes of alternately hunching over the bucket like an Irish washerwoman or doing the grape stomp, it seemed done. And by “seemed done,” I mean “was close enough to a size 8 that I didn’t care anymore because I was fucking crippled and sis-in-law could just wear some really thick socks with them and make them work. I put a ton of plastic bags in them to shape them, stuck them on the radiator to dry, and swallowed a fistful of Advil.

By the light of day the next morning, I could see they were a bit big, but as I hobbled around the house, I tried them on with socks and figured what the fuck, close enough for government work. I sewed on suede slipper bottoms to make them a little less slippy, then stuck a little note in them that said this was my first attempt at hand-felting, please excuse the unevenness, but I hoped she would like them anyway. I did not say that this would also be my last attempt at hand-felting. Because screw it, I don’t care if I have to beg, borrow, or steal, the next time I do felting it will be with the aid of a washing machine. I still hurt, and ain’t no one on earth special enough that their present gets to cause me pain for two days.

A week and a half left till Christmas, three knitted presents and one cross-stitch to go. I can do eet.

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