Three babies in my office this fall. *Three!* Cutie-pies who I’ll want to cuddle and carry around whenever their mommies bring them for visits. We’ve had fun with the baby showers, oohed over the new arrival photos, and sent casseroles to welcome the new parents home. But I wanted to do something special for each of them, just from me, so I set my heart on making baby booties for each new arrival. I’m a little late since the third one has now arrived, but nevertheless, booties don’t take long to knit, right?
Right?
I guess not, if you only knit each of them once. I was using this pattern, which looked like a good basic bootie. You’ve gotta love a pattern titled, “Grandmother Owl’s Really Good Booties.” I knit a test swatch or two since I always have to adjust the needle size I use (loose knitter), then hit the trail. The first couple of times I made the bootie, I was struggling with seaming the sole. Once I tried a three-needle bind off, however, that problem was licked. Then I had to tinker with the gapping stitch where the instep met the side of the foot. Next, I wrestled with seaming from the sole to the ankle, with mixed results. (A little sloppy, but not too bad in this boucle yarn.) Finally, I finished.
And hated the result. It was too long. I mean comically long. Clown foot long. Not long as in “you made the bootie too big, Carolyn,” but long as in “What is wrong with your baby’s feet?”
So I tried again. The instep was supposed to be 26 rows, so I made it 20. Nope; rip-rip-rip again. Then 16. No noticeable difference. From the polite “Um …” I got each time I showed the bootie to each person in my house, I guessed it was another lengthy error.
Here’s a shot of one of the booties (the 20-row version):
Still pretty freakin’ clownish, no? I’m imagining what I’ll say to my co-worker. “Just as a token of my affection for you, here’s a gift for your daughter … Flipper.” Or, “Your family still goes water skiing, right?”
It probably is a good pattern, but certainly not for my knitting or for the acrylic yarn I used; perhaps wool would make the long-paw design look normal if properly blocked.
Perhaps.
[Update: This became another abandoned project -- darn these UFOs!]
Technorati Tags: baby booties, baby knitting, knitting UFOs, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm
What can I say? I like to untangle things. Necklaces. Yarn. Doesn’t matter. Hand me a mess and I’m happy as a clam. (It’s a sickness, really.) It’s the silkiest, softest royal blue boucle with a glamorous sheen to it, and it came free in a mountainously generous quantity from a blogging friend who just wanted to get the tangled nightmare out of her house. (I suspect it was taunting her, as it is starting to taunt me.)
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