There must be something in the water (please excuse me for not drinking).

I find myself knitting booties for a flood of the newly expecting. So many in fact that over the past two weeks, for the sake of fun I've taken to playing with ankle part after the eyelet holes for the drawstring style bow.



This bootie is a combo of Dale Baby Ull and tiny leftovers from three candy color different self-striping sock yarns. Like I wrote before, just a yard is enough to do a stripe, so I save every scrap.

You could argue that my petaled bootie isn't entirely successful, that the top round of contrasting welting should be deeper, and that I should have worked a round in white before launching into the crown-like points at the top. But hey - these booties are the knitting equivalent of potato chips - quick snacks tossed off in between more substantial meals. However they are excellent for playing with some basic concepts before risking those ideas on a larger piece.

In this case, I looked at the thing (shown above before the bow tie is inserted), and thought that I'd like a pointy finish. I didn't want it elaborate or deep, and was too lazy to haul myself over to my bookshelf and dig through my collection of stitch pattern books. It being a no-brain night, I decided to improvise on the fly and do a no-brain edging knit onto the live stitches of my bootie ankle to eliminate seaming (a pain on something so small.)

These booties finish out with 40 stitches - 10 on each of four needles. 40 is a good number, it's an even multiple of 4 or 5, so an edging worked on 40 live stitches can have a 4 or 5 stitch repeat. For no reason whatsoever, I picked 5.

I cast two stitches onto a DPN, and knit one, then did a yarn over and worked the second together with the first stitch of my bootie ankle using a SSK. On the second bootie-out and all subsequent bootie-out rows, I flipped the thing over and knit back to the outer edge. On the next and edge-in subsequent rows, I knit until just before the last stitch, finishing out the row with a YO, SSK incorporating one stitch from the bootie ankle. After I'd "eaten" up four stitches of the bootie ankle and was ready for the fifth edge in row, I bound off until I had one stitch on the right hand needle and one stitch on the left. This last stitch I worked together with the fifth bootie ankle stitch. Voila!? A very simple 10-row petal edging custom-matched to the stitch count of the piece being trimmed. I did seven more points (eight in all - two per bootie ankle needle) and grafted the last two stitches to the cast on row. Bootie done, and neither seaming nor casting off was required.

Neither knitting an edging onto live stitches nor creating a very simple edging in this manner are new ideas, but both evoke a bit of "How did you do that" when seen outside of lace knitting circles.

I would improve this a bit were I to do it again. Instead of each point "eating" five ankle stitches and taking 10 rows to complete, I'd cheat a bit. I'd do an 8-row repeat, working my bind off on the fourth edge in row instead of the fifth, BUT instead of working a SSK with one edging stitch and one bootie stitch to conclude the bind-off row, I'd work a SSSK, fusing together one edging stitch and TWO bootie ankle stitches. In effect, I'd be working an 8-row repeat attached to five ankle stitches. This will draw in just a bit and counter the tendency for the edging to stretch the live stitches, and be wider than the tube of the item it completes. Most lace projects that? are ended off with an edging knit perpendicular to the body and don't exploit this natural tendency to ruffle do vary the stitch attachment count in a ratio closer to 3:2 than 1:1.

So, the next time you do a top-down hat, a tubular iPod case, or even a toe-up sock, think of finishing it off with a bunch of slightly silly, fluttery petals instead of the standard bind-off row. Or if you feel really ambitious - thumb through the lace edging section of your stitch dictionary, pick one with an appropriate row count and try it out out to put a crowning touch on your piece.