Hi, Everyone!

I have NOT dropped off the face of the earth - just busy.  I made a vow to work at least an hour each evening last week on the new slipper book.  After an hour, I'm not ready to stop, so I spent far more time than that last week.  Tom pitched in and tested some of the patterns for me, and found some things I need to fix, and he made some great suggestions to improve the book. 

At this point, the slipper book patterns are pretty much written, the slippers-for-soldiers campaign is almost history (I am donating a pile of these most recent samples when I go to club next week), and I'm filming video and doing some tune-ups.

More pictures of recent slippers, which were knitted to double-check and fix patterns:

First, here a couple of the standard gauge samples.  This is actually a pair that fits John (size 10-1/2) and Diana (size 8).  Guess what - the beautiful matching on the blue multi is a complete accident!  I was so low on the yarn when I was making the second slipper that I didn't have enough yarn to attempt a match, and it just happened that the partial ball I had left was perfect. 

For most of the standard gauge samples, I used nice hand knitting sock yarn.  The blue multi is some variety of that, but I cheated and lined them with some leftover Tamm Sky.  I am depleting my sock yarn stash!  The pair on the right in the rose are two shades of leftover Trenzado, which used to be a big favorite cone yarn of mine when we could still get Millor yarns.  Trenzado has some nylon and will probably hold up well.

The light blue slippers are one of a number of pairs I made to test the mid-gauge sizes.  I had a "Pound of Love" of the blue and one of white, so I guess I can make slippers until I am completely unhinged.  I also filmed with this light blue - here's one of my amateur videographer secrets - light blue seems to work very well for photography so that individual stitches show. 

By the way, folks, it looks like Knit Natters club has found a home at the wonderful church where we had our seminar and knit-in, Crystal Lake Baptist Church.  Next week, we meet at Point of Grace church in Pflugerville, and we're moving around a bit until the new year, when we settle in at Crystal Lake.  Our club is so grteful tht the congregation at Crystal Lake decided that they wanted to nurture our charity knitting efforts!

And now, another strange request for the wizards out there.  When I recently acquired a Silver Reed 860 and ribber, it came with the wrong clamps.  Getting the right clamps is not a problem, but I am very curious about these stray clamps.

The little bump sticking up on the slanted bar, near the part where you secure the bottom of your main bed, is unusual, different from every other set of clamps in my shamefully large collection of machines.  Those bumps must fit into a hole on the bottom of the main bed, and between the tang with the tightening nut and the bump, they would keep the main bed positioned  in place.  

I've used the wrong clamps on a ribber before, and learned the hard way that you need exactly the right clamps so your ribber will work properly.  These unusual clamps must be an vital part for some machine or other.

Does anyone know what machine these clamps fit?