These are just too cute. No, really. I may be sick.

Despite my ambivalence toward children, I thought these things up long ago. The only issue has been the construction. I am big on seamless designs, or at least designs that only require the picking up of stitches. Sewing together is great for afghans, but I feel it shouldn’t be relied upon for smaller items, except perhaps some knitted toys. Baby booties are just glorified socks, so I quickly departed from the modular designs I was planning on using and researched other baby booties, sock construction, and sizing. I knit quite a few baby booties — but only one of each, so as not to be in any way useful for a real baby — while trying to understand sizing and the merits of various types of construction. The problem was that most booties are either actually sock patterns, so they fold flat in a vertical orientation, or they focus on the body of the boot, making the sole an afterthought. For these, I really wanted to make the sole the focal point, for obvious reasons.

These are the first in what I believe will be a series of works which will use a combination of doubled-yarn work and double-knitting. I determined that one can use the stitches I call “2k2” and “2p2” as shaping elements in the double-knit box posted earlier, but one can also use them more thoroughly as body stitches, in this case, garter stitch. At any point in the work I can separate the two ends and use them to make double-knitting, which is only a little off the gauge of the garter stitch, easily blocked into uniformity. In the case of these booties, blocking isn’t necessary since it’s best to have the sole be just a little smaller than the top of the bootie anyway.