Ruthless Knitting Archive

Pattern: Old World Jester Booties by Gryphon Perkins from Interweave Knits, Winter 2006 (available only through Interweave’s website), smallest size.
Yarn: Nashua Creative Focus Worsted in Brilliant Blue and Harvest
Yardage: Not very much
Yarn Source: Iris Fine Yarns in Appleton, Wisc.
Needles: Knit Picks Classic Circular in size 2 (3.00 mm.), Addi Turbo in size 3.00 mm., and bamboo dpns in size 3.00 mm.
Gauge: Didn’t bother to check
Modifications/Comments: Now that these are finished, I’m quite fond of them. All the little jingle bells that I painstakingly sewed on with invisible thread make quiet tinkling sounds when you move the booties around, and they’re just so darn cute I can hardly stand it. I can imagine a tiny baby in these booties, just old enough to be kicking, finding the colors and noises that result to be highly entertaining.

I wish that I had enjoyed making these booties as much as I enjoy having them finished, but unfortunately they were kind of a death march. This was not at all the designer’s fault — the pattern is easy and quite clever, and it should be a breeze for any intermediate knitter. The problem was the combination of yarn and needles that I employed. The bootie pattern calls for a 2.75 mm. straight needle, with 2.75 mm. double-pointed needles to be used for the I-cord dangly bits. I don’t have any straight needles smaller than a size 4, but I do have metal circular needles from Knit Picks in 3.00 mm., so I used those for the first bootie. I also substituted for the yarn, since I thought my blue and orange Nashua leftovers from the Buster sweater would be just the thing color-wise. The problem is that when you combine single-ply, lightly spun worsted with sharp, tiny metal needles, the result is splitty, fiddly knitting hell. And it makes your wrists hurt. I actually enjoyed the I-cord part of the pattern best because I could use my bamboo dpns, which worked like a charm. For the second bootie, I remembered that I had a set of Addis in a 3.00 mm., so I used them instead. They worked out better, but they still made my wrists hurt, and they were pretty much worthless for the p2togtbl maneuver.

If I were to make these again, I’d find a way to do it on bamboo needles. But in any case they only took a few hours to make, and all is forgiven when I gaze upon the cuteness of the booties.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 8:47 am and is filed under Finished Objects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.