{"id":1952,"date":"2019-01-29T17:21:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T17:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.wordpress.com\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2019-01-29T17:21:05","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T17:21:05","slug":"snatching-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/?p=1952","title":{"rendered":"Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1959\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/7-2.jpg\" alt=\"7.jpg\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a joy and a blessing when the small people you&#8217;ve spent years running around after are at last able to begin to fend for themselves and, even better, to help around the house.<\/p>\n<p>Dishwashers emptied, washing up done, sitting room tidied and hoovered&#8230; A total gift. And a blessed relief.<\/p>\n<p>Buuuuuuut.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a sore point about to be made and I&#8217;m sure you have already figured it out. It seems that every post I make at the moment mentions my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.loveknitting.com\/beauteous-boot-socks-knitting-pattern-by-alice-neal?utm_medium=affiliate&amp;a_aid=7d8ae305\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Beauteous Boot Socks<\/a>. There&#8217;s a very good reason for that. I love them. I love them so much that I knitted myself about 5 pairs over the last couple of winters.\u00a0 Indeed, if you click on the link, you will see that the photograph <em>for the pattern itself<\/em> is the very pair in question.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t need words, though. You just need this picture:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1954\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/2-3.jpg\" alt=\"2\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1352\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yup, that&#8217;s the very same pair. *le sigh*<\/p>\n<p>See&#8230; when your darlings start putting on the laundry, it&#8217;s worth mentioning to them that wool &#8211; you know, proper wool &#8211; shrinks. It&#8217;s also worth NOT putting said wool in the family laundry basket when you&#8217;ve taught them how to use the machine, and asked them to put a load on.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1953\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1-4.jpg\" alt=\"1\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>How on earth only ONE made it into the machine is another question entirely.<\/p>\n<p>So now, I have one delightfully soft and fluffy boot sock, and one tiny, stiff, very thick felted&#8230; thing. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I still find it quite beautiful, but <em>what to do with it??<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1955\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/3-2.jpg\" alt=\"3\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Well, it started with a gulp, a pair of scissors and:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1956\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/4-2.jpg\" alt=\"4\" width=\"1432\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It then progressed to the 1950s PFAFF sewing machine we recently acquired for peanuts on eBay:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1958\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/6-2.jpg\" alt=\"6\" width=\"1484\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Next was a decorative button and magnetic popper and&#8230; voila!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1960\" src=\"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/7-3.jpg\" alt=\"7\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My new handbag phone-sock is born.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s a thing of beauty and I guess I&#8217;m just going to have to shrink the other sock, right?<\/p>\n<p>As for my plans for the bottom of the sock, oh, yes! I have some. But I had to order something to make it work, which will take a little while to arrive, and, to quote my husband, it <em>is<\/em> a bit bonkers. (At least, he thinks so \ud83d\ude09 ) When the time comes, I&#8217;ll let you decide &lt;3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a joy and a blessing when the small people you&#8217;ve spent years running around after are at last able to begin to fend for themselves and, even better, to help around the house. Dishwashers emptied, washing up done, sitting room tidied and hoovered&#8230; A total gift. And a blessed relief. Buuuuuuut. There&#8217;s a sore [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,32,34],"tags":[37,77,136,148,218,220,236,241,247,266,269,278,290,349,351,352,424,455],"class_list":["post-1952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news","category-sewing","tag-1950s","tag-beauty","tag-crafts","tag-design","tag-handknit","tag-handmade","tag-how-to","tag-inspiration","tag-journal","tag-knitters-gonna-knit","tag-knitting","tag-knitting-inspiration","tag-lifestyle","tag-pfaff-sewing-machine","tag-phone-case","tag-phone-sock","tag-stripes","tag-tutorial"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliceinknittingland.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}