Baby booties

Friends of ours recently had a baby, little Alison. To honour this new life, they had a baby shower last Sunday. About a week before that, I suddenly thought of making a little present for Alison myself, instead of only going for a registered present.

I found the pattern for Saartje’s booties on Ravelry and I still had some Phildar Super Baby yarn lying around, so I had everything to start going. All I needed was some time… As you may know already, my husband and I are renovating a house, and that really narrows down my crafting time. But there’s always the daily train commute I take from Ghent to Brussels, good for 40 minutes per ride.

Saartje’s booties come in two sizes: a smaller size and a larger size. Since we were talking baby, I decided to do the smaller size. They went quite fast, and the were finished by the middle of the week. Easy peasy! But then it suddenly dawned on me that babies grow pretty fast. And the booties looked ever so small. What if they wouldn’t fit? What kind of present would that be?

So, I started knitting the larger size as well. I must say that at this point, I did start feeling a bit stressed. I was running out of time! And then something happened. Not something good or lucky, but in the end, it did come in handy. There was an accident where a crane fell onto the railway tracks and messed up the cables. Luckily, nobody got hurt, but it did cause major delays. All trains going to and coming from Ghent had to be diverted, taking 20 to 40 minutes longer. Not really something to be happy about, but it did give me enough time to knit the second pair of booties.

And then there still was the finishing up to do. I bought some buttons during my lunch time on Friday and found the time to attach them at midnight Saturday night. Finished! I know, the buttons on the smaller booties aren’t as cute as the one on the larger ones, due to a minor miscalculation by yours truly. But they’re still cute!