Euro-style Moccasins

Although these are some of my favorite booties from the fall collection, I had a difficult time naming them. They are moccasin-style slippers, another pattern variant of my own, but there's something both modern and European about them.

The yarn is a very soft and squishy bulky acrylic that I've had in my stash for a while. I designed the moccasins around the yarn, and was very pleased by the result. I am out of the yarn that I used, but there is a possibility that I might be able to find more of this colorway if you want a close match to these. This specific pair of booties is made in size 6-12 months.

The ties lace up the cuff and then tie around behind to hold the booties securely on the baby's feet. The ties are hidden neatly by the cuff fold, and all together create a very neat look.

Suggested Retail: $24.00. These booties will be available at the Paper Crane in Bloomington on and after October 15th.

Boaz's Cowboy Boots

Recently I was commissioned to make some cowboy booties for a much-anticipated unborn baby boy named Boaz. When I started sketching out my ideas, I was surprised to discover that there wasn't already a good cowboy boot pattern available. It took me a couple tries to come up with a pattern that I was happy with, but I finally did. Here is the result! I have notes for a 0-3 month set (pictured here), but I want to make it in another size or two before I publish the pattern.

These booties are knit with superwash wool (the dark brown) and hand-spun mohair for the embroidery. The mohair is from my goats, and it was dyed with tea to achieve that pretty tan color. Mohair has a slight sheen to it, so it was a nice contrast with the soft brown of the boot.

On the tops of the boots I embroidered barley shafts to reference Boaz's namesake. I like to imagine the Biblical Boaz in cowboy boots, bringing in the barley harvest.

Suggested Retail: $20.00

P.S. I have more of both of these yarns, and would be open to making some more in sizes other than 0-3 months so that I can iron out the kinks in my pattern. Leather soles will be a little extra, but would be great to turn these into toddler booties!

Flower Child Moccasins

I knit these beautiful booties a while back, but was saving them until fall to post. To me, these are the perfect combination of delicate and earthy, and look great both with dresses and pants.

These booties are knit with some really lovely yarns, a variegated super soft wool blend on top and a cushy superwash wool for the sole. They will fit a baby from approximately 3-9 months.

The pattern for these moccasins is my own, although it is based off several other booties and traditional moccasins that I looked at for inspiration. I love the flowering vine on the cuff, and how it brings out the muted colors of the yarn.

Soon I'll be learning how to sew leather onto the soles of shoes so I can make toddler booties too, since these are a little slippery for a baby learning how to walk.

Suggested Retail: $24.00. Again, these will be available at The Paper Crane in Bloomington on and after October 15th. I can make more booties in this style, but these specific booties are knit from a yarn that I can't get anymore. If you want these booties, you'd better hurry in to the Paper Crane to buy them!

Re-purposed, upcycled yarn!

A few weeks ago I was came close to despairing at the cost of nice yarn. Like any knitter, I love knitting with quality, animal-fiber yarns but our slim budget doesn't really allow for buying specialty yarns. Then I remembered how, back in January, I had some beautiful results with reused, hand-dyed yarn from a thrift store sweater. Finally, I decided to try to stock my yarn cupboard this fall with more gorgeous upcycled yarn.

First I needed to find the right sweater to unravel. I found this 100% lambswool sweater at the Salvation Army for $2.99. It was perfect for what I needed - unfelted, large and with simple seaming. After picking apart the seams carefully, I unraveled each piece and wound them into long skeins.

The yarn skeins looked a lot like ramen noodles - way crinkley!

Next, I soaked the wool skeins in the sink for half an hour while I mixed up the dyes. For this batch, I just used Kool-Aid (and knock-off store brand powdered drink mixes). They make bright, beautiful color-fast dyes. Kind of scary when you think that kids are drinking that stuff!

Then I poured the dye over the wool skeins in stripes, pressing the dye in by hand to make sure it penetrated all layers. My hands ended up as brightly colored as the yarn!

With one of the skeins I tried an experiment that I saw somewhere else online. I poured blue dye into one half of a casserole dish, and green in the other half. Then I placed the skein in the dish, folded up, and let it soak up the dye without moving it around. This worked fairly well, but it did leave some areas un-dyed. Fortunately the small amounts of white worked well with the sea-colors of the finished yarn. I'm hoping to make some sea-monster items out of this yarn!

After the yarn was thoroughly dyed, I took it out to the back yard to cook in the warmth, sun-tea style. Heat helps the yarn absorb the dye and make it colorfast.

After a couple hours in the sun I brought the yarn indoors, rinsed it thoroughly (although the yarn had absorbed the dye so well that not much rinsed out), and hung it to dry. Do you like my improvised drying rack which doubles as a floor lamp?

To measure the yarn my husband screwed a couple bolts into a board 18" apart. This was a rather tedious way of finding out approximately how many yards were in a ball of yarn, and hopefully I'll be able to come up with a better way later on. Nevertheless, I discovered that with this particular yarn 250 yards = 2.3 oz = 65 grams.

The yarn sure makes a beautiful skein.

Most of the yarn I wound up on my new Lacis Ball-winder - my favorite new tool! It really sped up the process of winding from skeins, plus the balls are very attractive. Although the balls vary in size somewhat (such must be the case when using recycled yarn) I made sure that each ball had at least 250 yards.

And there you have it, an old sweater turned into a beautiful, bright pile of yarn! The only question remaining is - how does it knit? And what about felting?

Well, here is a pair of t-strap booties that I knit with large needles in order to felt them. Kind of misshapen at first...

...but so sophisticated after felting!

These Mary Janes were knitted on small needles, so they are close in size to the felted booties. Another style, same yarn.

The Mary Janes are newborn sized, and the T-strap booties are just a bit bigger at 0-3 months.

Suggested retail: $7/250 yard ball of yarn, and $15 each for a pair of simple booties like these.

Stay tuned for more dye lots and projects with upcycled sweaters. I've got a lot more in the works that I'll be posting as the weather cools down and our thoughts turn to stylish warm accessories!

Rainbow Trout Booties

This is a post I've been looking forward to posting for quite a while now. My friend Ali and her husband Luke are in the last few weeks of waiting for their first child, a long-awaited and much-prayed-for little girl. Since Ali's baby shower was tonight, I can finally post pictures of the booties I finished several months ago. Before I show you the pictures, it helps to know that Ali and Luke and baby all share the last name of "Trout." So, allow me to present:

Rainbow Trout Booties! Aren't they great?

The yarn totally made these. It's a sock yarn that I got at Yellow Dog Knitting in Eau Claire (that Christmas present has spread so far!). The pattern is basically Blue Steps with added fins, embroidered mouths and eyes.

Little girls make good fishermen too.

So there you have them. Wearable fish. Anyone else want a pair? Or have another concept in need of a special design? I love a challenge!

Suggested Retail: $22.00

Persian Slipper Set

This Saturday I'll be having a booth at the Christian Childbirth Expo with some of my baby items for sale and on display. Along with the Sunshine and Salsa collection, I've made a number of fun pacifier clips and other small things for sale.

These Persian slippers are knit from Susan B. Anderson's book, Itty-Bitty Nursery. I've got to say, I really love Mrs. Anderson's style, and if I ever publish my own book of knitting designs (still a distant dream at this point) she will have been one of my first inspirations.

Even though I knit the booties slightly larger than the pattern stated, they still are a bit too small for Annie. I think they would be ideal for a 0-3 month baby. They're so soft and warm that even Collin and I wanted a pair. Unfortunately, it was a very time-intensive pattern even for the baby size, so I don't think we're going to get any adult slippers anytime soon.

I really love the butterfly pacifier clip, and I'm sure I'll make more butterflies in other yarns and color combinations. This lovely wool/acrylic yarn was a gift that some of our good friends picked out in Michigan, and the booties used almost all of it up. They're that deliciously thick! I can't describe how nice these feel, you'll just have to come to the expo and touch them yourself.

Suggested retail: $24.00 for the booties, $10.00 for the pacifier clip.

Elvish Shoes

Our good friends, Gandalf (yes that's his real name) and Anna are expecting their first baby in early June. We're very excited to meet their little girl, and I loved designing some booties for them.

I chose the two-strap Mary Jane style of Saartje's Booties for these delicate shoes, and knit it with a grey mohair blend. The white yarn on top was yarn I spun from the fleece of my goats, Euodia and Syntyche.

There they are, on my parent's farm, right after their spring haircut a few years ago. That's Tyche on the left, and Dia on the right - a true shepherd can tell one goat from another. Most people don't get to know the names of the animals their clothes came from!

When I was designing booties for Gandalf and Anna's baby I wanted to include both Anna's quiet beauty (she grew up Mennonite) and also allude to the Lord of The Rings because Gandalf's name was too fun to pass up. Green vines wind freely around the booties, with purple flowers both embroidered and sewn on as buttons.

On the sole of the booties I embroidered Gandalf's signature rune - the one the original Grey Wizard used to mark Bilbo's door so all the dwarves would show up for that unexpected party that started all the adventures. I don't expect that this baby will get tangled up with any dragons, but I do know that her birth is going to mean lots of new adventures in the Farnam family!

Suggested Retail: $20.00

Viola Booties

Currently there are 17 women (that I know of) pregnant or adopting at my church. The next baby due is my friend Kaitlyn's (and her husband Andrew's), expected in early April. Andrew and Kaitlyn are both violists, and Andrew is also an instrument maker, so I asked myself one question when designing booties for their baby:

What would it look like if a converse high top had a baby with a viola?

Well, I think it would look kind of like this. It would be knit out of thin double-stranded red and orange wool, to imitate the woodgrain of a brightly colored viola. It would have a fingerboard/tailpiece in place of a shoe tongue, with golden strings lacing up the top. It would have f-holes on the sides, and for baby Henry it would have the Henry Basses logo embroidered on the top.

Check out HenryBasses.com to see more of Andrew's work, or read the story behind his business here.

The one thing I was disappointed about with these booties is that the French knots which made up the end of the strings disappeared into the tailpiece on the left boot. I also tried adding a bridge under the strings, but it looked out of place so I took it out.

The strings/laces themselves worked really well. After battling with some more authentic-looking (but boring) grey yarn for a while, I decided these violas would have golden strings. Using double-stranded gold metallic crochet thread, I laced up the four strings and sealed the ends with clear fingernail polish.

Suggested retail: $24.00