Warm feet and hiking help

It's been a week of last minute hurried knitting and crochet.

It's been getting cooler out over here, and with cool weather comes cold feet.
Every year I make Bill a pair of slippers, and every year, without fail they are un-wearable by March.

For this year's pattern I chose the two needle slippers from the Irish Ewe.



But I hate seaming, and I thought a seam right along the sole of the foot would be a bit uncomfortable, and a prime weak spot for wearing. So instead I used the Turkish cast on and knit these puppies in the round. I also double stranded the sole portion to add extra tightness to hopefully extend their life, it also made them extra squishy and warm. (although the tight gauge did hurt my hands, but luckily the soles knit up quickly.)



I used 100% wool stash yarn left over from other projects; I call them his Superman slippers.


With the sudden freedom from work I have had plenty of time to do other things, including Hiking, one of Bill's and my favorite activities.
The weather was perfect this Sunday for a nice hike along the trails on Wellesley Island.
As we were making plans on Saturday night Bill mentioned we should bring water, (as we always do) but he didn't want to bring the whole backpack just for a couple of bottles. Luckily I had Ravely and remembered seeing a pattern for a water bottle sling just the pother day! (I do so love my Ravely!)

So that night I grabbed some cotton and my crochet hook and worked on Hidrate!



The pattern calls for fingering, but I didn't have any fingering cotton on hand, and really wanted these done by Sunday afternoon, so I made a few changes and went to town.
They turned out rather nice, the pink one was my first try and I had a couple of sizing issues, but those got worked out on the blue one. Also, I knit faster than I crochet, so I actually knit the straps, instead of the crochet straps that were called for. I probably could have made them longer, the can go across the chest, but the bottle sits rather high up, I'll fix that when I make the next batch, as we usually carry bigger bottles that the small 16 oz ones these were made for.



That has pretty much been the scope of my fiber arts over the last few days, although I have picked up the doily again and plan on finishing it before I pick up the shawl, I have far too many projects going right now for my tastes.