Fuzzy Feet

The final installment of stealth knitting is this pair of felted slippers for my dad for Christmas. Yes, they are that blurry in real life. It's the mohair.

These are from the ubiquitous Fiber Trends felted clog pattern, and it's popular for a reason. It goes very quickly, provided you do not make any number of silly mistakes. However, there are very many mistakes that you could make and screw them up entirely.
For example, I taught these as a class at Peggy's Strands of Heaven, and I think I'm doing it again in January (or February, check the class list). I made the sample on the wall there, the obnoxiously pink ones. These things look very silly unfelted, let me tell you. But they also look very silly if you try, as I did, to attach the outer sole to bottom of the inner sole. I don't know how many times I went through that before I got it right. And if you haven't done these in a while, don't do them while people are talking. It is guaranteed to get your count off, and it's hard to recover. But barring silly mistakes, these really are a fast knit.
If you know the pattern, these are made without the "bumper" on them. I had originally inteded to add a leather sole to them, but it was, well, leather colored, and these clogs are not. I didn't realize it would show too much until I held it up to the bottom. It would have completely covered the lower dark grey portion. So I decided to risk it, after testing the slippers on the garage floor to make sure they do not live up to their name.
What else am I going to do with men's 13" leather soles? Duncan already chewed through the bag, so there's no returning it.
I made a slight modification to the pattern as I went along. Well, I didn't so much modify it as decided to pick up the stitches the easy way. When you attach the hem of the cuff or the second sole to the body of the slipper, the pattern wants you to go pick up all the required stitches on one needle, and then knit them together and bind off. This is entirely too much effort for me, so I picked up each stitch individually, knit it together with its partner on the needle, and then bound off. While this idea drives Lorna crazy, I find it goes much faster. You can always squeeze a stitch or two in or out if you need to.
Also, I heard about a modification on the internet where you knit the sole in one solid piece. As the pattern stands, you work sort of a parabola shape with short rows, then seam it up the middle. This hasn't particularly bothered me, but I'm curious about the other way. I might give it a try during the second installment of the class.

In Summary:
Pattern: Fiber Trends Felted Clogs
Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulky, two skeins dark grey, one skein light grey (85% wool, 15% mohair)
Needles: Size 13, 16" and 24" , but you could get away with just the 16" if you had to
Time: Really quickly. You could easily do one clog in an evening, again with the no-mistakes caveat.