Building a Slipper Pattern

I wanted a slipper pattern for our upcoming knit-in for soldiers, who say they like warm slippers best of any of the knits they've received, and I thought about it for a week or more before I started to knit.  I didn't how to get what I wanted:

• It had to be lined and warm. 
• It had to work with any machine, bulky, mid-gauge, or standard. 
• It had to be fairly fast to knit.
• I wanted to be able to teach it to our beginners fairly easily. 
• It needs to suit either a man or a woman. 
• I didn't want to require  ribber for this, since we have to lug everything to the church where we meet for the knit-in, and since not everybody has a ribber or likes to use a ribber.

Then Pat Tittizer sent me two slipper patterns by email for ideas.  There is the good old lined, short-rowed and gathered one, which I hadn't made in years, I tried out in purple and put on the blog with the question about who developed the pattern.  You can get that pattern in several places on the Web, it turns out, and I'm not going to republish it.

I didn't like the lumpy gathers, but it certainly is fast, warm, and easy.  You can cover them with a pom pom or crocheted trim, but that's very feminine-looking.  I reviewed all my past slipper patterns.  Over the years, I have created two mocassins, several sock-like ones, a doubled bulky one that has been on this blog, a felted one, one for the CSM, and several ribber ones.  A bunch of my old slipper patterns are here on this blog, in various places! (If you are curious, do a search for "slipper" in the search box above "Diana Natters On" in the header of the blog.)  The best warm slipper, unless everyone purchases felting wool, is the doubled one, and it's a lot of sewing.  You have to sew a decent mattress stitch for it to look great.
.
Then I had an idea for a no-sew, lined slipper that is finished as it comes off the machine.  I started by cutting up and taping bits of paper to work out the geometry, then knitted the unlined maroon sample.  It's okay, but I had to crochet the toe together.  Next, I knitted the variegated one on the bulky, but I thought the front of the foot looked a little messy, and I wanted it to come up higher on the foot.

I was getting close to what I wanted with the peach one, but the gauge was too loose.  I am still surprised at how much the LK150's gauge changes from one number to the next.

The winner is the pink one!  It looks neat-as-a-pin on the top of the foot, there is virtually no finishing (just ends to hide), and I decided it's worth recharting in all the different machine gauges.  Now this week, before club meets, I'll be working out the math for the sizes and knitting samples.