Say hello to Aunty Claire! My little neice, Amelia Rose (Milly, for short) was born last week. So, of course, the first thing I did was knit. And also, of course, it had to be shoes!
Milly’s reaction to the shoes wasn’t quite what I’d been hoping for – it mostly involved kicking furiously until they fell off! Still, maybe four days old was a teensy bit young for me to be inflicting ridiculous shoes on the poor child.
These are Saartje’s Bootees, from a free pattern on Ravelry.
The yarn is a lovely hand-dyed sock yarn (“Skeins” superwash merino bamboo) which is currently being knitted into socks, but I thought I could sacrifice a few metres to make these.
I started knitting on 2.25mm needles, but the shoes came out much too small. 2.75mm needles would have been too big, so I ended up using an odd size of imperial English needles that were bigger than 2.25mm but smaller than 2.5mm. I could only find dpns in this peculiar size, so I had to get a bit creative with a lump of plasticine to stop the stitches from falling off the ends! I made the larger size, and it came out to the correct measurement for the smaller size, which was about 3¼” long. Just right for tiny baby feet!
Strangely, none of my local shops actually carry 2.5mm needles. I think it might be time to go online and order a little pile of circulars in a good length for knitting socks.