Shake Your Bootayz

I finally have a bootie pattern I like! Let me rephrase: I finally designed a bootie pattern I like.

There are lots of cute "Mary Jane" type patterns out there, and those are great for a girl child, but the Boy needed something a bit more manly, with a touch of whimsy, and warm for these cold winter months.

I wanted something that wasn't a sock, but that wasn't a mess of garter stitching. I'm not a fan of the garter stitching so much. Small doses are best. I like colorwork a lot, though.

So these are in brown and black and next to red I have to say they're the two hardest colors to photograph accurately. Too dark, too light...even with my super new camera, these pics kind of suck.

But the bootayz are brown mostly with black crochet ties and a bit of colorwork around the side of the foot. On the instep I appliqued a black felt star with gold blanket stitching and some french knot accents. I stitched on a black felt sole as well with gold blanket stitching and embroidered some stars there as well. They fit, they stay on, and he looks more dressed for the outdoors with them than he does in just his stocking feet.

Why not buy him shoes, you ask? Because he has a foot like a potato. They don't make a shoe with an instep high enough. And I'm a fan of soft footwear on the little ones, even when they're kind of big.

I'm tweaking the pattern to fit little babies up to big ones as well.

In other knitting content, because I've decided that this post will be about knitting content, I've mastered the Norwegian mitten. I think. Once I learned the basics of how it is structured, it wasn't hard to design some patterns and get to knitting. It took a few tries before I got my gauge issues sorted out, so one pair is kind of biggish and two pair are kind of smallish, but size is subjective. They're biggish and smallish--on ME. I'm sure they'll fit someone, somewhere. And to that end, they're for sale in my etsy shop. You can view them at your leisure by following the handy link to the side over there. It's easier than posting all of them here all over again. I have one pair in black and green all ready to block, one mitten of a pair (navy and white with dark red button accents) done in my basket, and I just started designing a flip-top mitten pattern in light blue merino that I like as well.

Again, lots of nice convertible mitten patterns out there, but not one that's exactly what I want. So, I have my own mitten pattern that I use and I'll just adapt that one to suit my needs.

Does the world need another mitten book? Because I could write one.

Before I forget, I have to tell you what Bobo said to me this morning. I was in the bathroom (just off the kitchen) and I could hear her talking to herself by the computer. I asked her what she was doing, to which she replied...mind you, she's just shy of five...

"I'm just chatting online."

Where could she have picked that up from?