Baby's First Mukluks

As stated in my last post, I knitted the Green Serf Booties from the IK website. The upcoming baby for whom they are intended is an Alaskan with an adventurous mother. Therefore, he or she is going to need a pair of mukluks as soon as possible and I thought this pattern could be nicely adapted to the look I wasa going for.

I knit them with Cascade 220, and after fulling, whipstitched a crochet chain of Fun Fur to the cuff. Although I hate Fun Fur with a passion, I think this is proof that it can be a cute accent in the right setting. Inititally I was going to trim the cuff with rabbit fur, but this proved not to look as neat as I thought it would, so here we are.

I am happy with how the booties turned out, but had some major issues with the pattern. I did not like how it called for knitting light worsted weight yarn on 2.75 mm. This would have been fine normally, but for a felted item, there was not enough space between the stitches so that the fabric could mat quickly and firmly. It took many washings and even a trip through the dryer (which I never do with felted knits) to get them how I wanted.

Also, the author called for cutting the felt in order to thread through the laces. I feel that even in the most firmly felted fabric that cutting makes for a weak spot that can tear- especially by a baby who has just discovered their feet. My solution was to thread 2 strands of Sugar & Creme cotton through the places where I wanted the laces to go so that the fabric would felt around the cotton and leave a nice little hole like so:

Anyway, I have some other projects on the horizon, but they are on hold whilst I work on more stained glass goodness and shred my fingertips with said glass to the point where even knitting becomes painful. I am a sheer masochist during this time of year- anything to make a buck ;-)