Dear Melynda,

I love my slippers, Melynda. I really do.

When I first saw your pattern, it was love. I grabbed a coworker with no knitting experience and drug her to my LYS, and we stocked up on yarn and watched as it clicked away on the swift and ball winder. Then I taught her to knit as we made our first pairs of your slippers.

Together, we seamed up each slipper, and then we had a felting party over the phone. With my slippers in tow, I went from store to store looking for the perfect buttons. I found them, I sewed them on, and it was magic.



I am not exaggerating when I say I never took the slippers off. I don't like walking around barefoot, my feet get too cold, so through spring, summer, fall, and winter, I wore my slippers. Along the way, we met in Detroit, and I made an idiot out of myself raving to you about your pattern at the market. But in my defense, I was smitten with the slippers. I hope you didn't think I was dangerously unbalanced. I really am quite harmless.

Sadly, not all good things last forever. Around Christmas, I noticed that the soles of my feet seemed a little colder than they had in past months. I shrugged the feeling off. Certainly my feet would be colder. The house was cold. The world was cold. That's what winter is all about.

But last month, I was pulling my slippers on when I noticed a bit of fuzz on the bottom of my left slipper. I reached down and removed it. It wasn't fuzz, Melynda. It was slipper.



Indeed, the sole of my slipper had felt drafty because it had become paper-thin through excessive wear. I might have been able to save my slipper, had I examined them when my feet first felt a chill, but ignoring the problem had only caused it to grow, and now I would need all new soles to save the slippers. While I could have felted new soles and attached them, I knew the act would only prolong the life of my slippers by unnatural means. The slippers would want me to say goodbye, let them go, and move on with my life. I went back to my LYS. I found yarn, carefully selected to match the buttons from my first pair of slippers. I took the yarn back home, wound it on my new swift, and on Sunday afternoon, I started knitting.

Experience had made me wiser. Now I knew how to seam my slippers to help them felt smoothly (the process involves actually following your seaming directions instead of making up my own). I knew that a touch of hand-felting would make the tops flawless. I knew how long the straps ought to be and when to take them out of the washing machine. Armed with my knowledge, I felted them.

See?



Aren't they lovely?



(Yes, those are the same buttons.)



I know I'm not the first to tell you how amazing this pattern is, and I know this isn't the first time I've said it. Still, I have to say it again. I love these slippers.



Thank you for designing them. My feet would be much colder (not to mention less stylish) without them.