#progress of work

So I ran into an issue before I even started this project: Should I use the actual yarn or the T-shirt yarn to make this? I found this tutorial and it's made with very chunky yarn, I don't have anything this chunky. T-shirts seem like an endless source of material because people gift me the unwanted ones constantly.

Not wanting to get paralyzed by the decision making, I decided to start with yarn and then decide later what's the best; I'd have to make two layers for soles anyway and maybe I could use both.

Now, I don't care at all what my slippers look like. I'm without heating and my floor is cold tile. I need a soft slipper to land on in the morning. I went through my inherited yarn stash and picked the yarn I disliked the most, black+white mixed ones.

I never like anything to look so busy. Now if you're an experienced fiber artist, you saw that picture and went, 'That's not enough yarn to make footwear,' and ... well how could I have known that. Shut up. We'll get to it.

Anyway, I made some soles using the yarn! Tutorial got me just to make the shape, and then I kept making rows around it to get it to size. I ran out of black+white yarn mix but I had some white+purple so I just added that in. None of the yarn I have is labelled but I think this is cotton; it's super sturdy and I like it.

Next I decided to make T-shirt yarn! It's made by grabbing scissors and cutting a shirt into a continuous strip from bottom to top. I picked these two awful synthetic ones because nobody wants to wear that.

That one on the right was made of 'acetate' and I don't know what that is, but the black coloring somehow leaked into my silicone crochet hook holder and re-colored it! It became purple-cyan instead of just cyan. Luckily that's a very pretty combo. But a shirt leaking color on whatever it touches is not great.

T-shirt soles were super quick to make! Much less crocheting to get there. I knew then that I needed to put shirt yarn as a bottom layer, and cotton as top, because the cotton one is more finely made and better to be touching my socks.

I fastened them together using slip stitches on the sides and the middle, and got so excited! These felt sturdy and good! It was gonna be my first piece of footwear and I wanted to make shoes since I was a child and someone told me I couldn't. That will show them!

Next day (we are on day 3 of the project) I started crocheting the top part; I had intended the black+pink ball of yarn for this. And. In real time realized I do not in fact, have enough of it. I would have to involve a whole new ball of yarn for this.

I went through the stash again and grabbed a pink ball; not because I hate it, but because I don't see myself using it much. It looked like the Least Useful color. It was chunky enough. I tripled it (I used a trick to use triple thread of every yarn in the project, without unraveling the ball) and went on to crochet, bummed I didn't realize this before and hadn't designed the colors to look cohesive. I then again realized in real time I'd done a terrible job, it was too bunched up, and my slipper looked nasty.

I decided to leave that and try to do the other one better, and then using the new knowledge, re-do the first one. But this time I was smarter and thought about how the colors could work together. The second slipper. Looked amazing.

I thought that making the top part wouldn't take long, maybe an hour. I later timed myself and realized it's 3 hours for each slipper. I am bad at estimating everything. I took additional 3 hrs to re-do the first slipper. And somehow. It was still bad.

It took me a minute to figure out why it looked so weird and off, turns out I didn't center it correctly when I started. So I,,, unravelled it again,,, and using the last bit of perseverence and patience,, I did it correctly and it's good now!