"One of my favourite patterns in the first Whimsical Little Knits is the Tiny Shoes, simple little baby Mary Janes with an I-cord strap. When the pattern came out, plenty of knitters seemed to like it just as much as I did, but some of them didn’t just want to make tiny shoes. The question “could I make a pattern for Tiny Shoes for bigger feet” seemed to have an obvious answer: “no, the proportions are all wrong, they’ll be much too wide and short.” But, I’m nothing if not contrary, and once I’d decided that scaling up the Tiny Shoes pattern wouldn’t work, it proved impossible to completely let go of the idea.
Two books later, although it was included as a possibility in the first outline of Whimsical Little Knits 2, it had percolated for long enough. The answer to the proportions issue is, as the answer to more interesting shapes in knitting so often is, short rows. In fact these would be an excellent project on which to try out the technique for the first time. It’s hard to compete with the cuteness of baby toes wrapped in wool, but a lot of trial and error resulted in visual proportions that come as close as possible. The stitches themselves are scaled up, the chunky gauge makes for a project that can be completely almost as quickly as the tiny version and there are few things as wonderfully cozy as walking around the house on a thick bed of garter stitch. For slippery floors it may be a good idea to add non-stick paint or iron-on pads."
No comments:
Post a Comment