French Press Slippers Stage 1

I was infected by the French Press Slipper virus before Christmas. It was very catching just then, with presents to make, and despite having dozens of patterns in the shop I purchased this one from Melynda Bernadi. (I have given the Ravelry link for the pattern)
Unfortunately, I did not have a definitely feltable worsted (10ply/category 4/aran weight) yarn on hand. I had to experiment.
My first experiment was with the fabulously red Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in colour Spain.
Here they are unfelted. Isn't the colour gorgeous? Using this yarn, and achieving gauge, my slippers unfelted were not as quite long as the pattern indicated, unless I stretched them a bit. I did not worry too much about this, as I was relying on the felting to fix any fitting tweaks.

Alas, silk and cashmere severely limit the feltability (is that a word?) of wool. These poor slippers spent a whole day in my mother in law's top loading washing machine (12 agitation cycles) before sort of half felting.

My daughter likes these slippers, but all that hot washing faded the vibrant red, and the slippers remained a little too big. I was glad I had not added a bit to achieve the pattern length. I really had to pull the strap across hard whilst sewing to make the slippers fit widthways. They are very soft and smooth to wear, but I don't think the Silkroad Aran Tweed was a good yarn choice for this project.
Stranded in Sydney with all the yarn shops closed for Christmas, next I tried the pattern out in 8ply pure wool. I will post about this experiment next.