Felted Booties

Instructions

Hissukka
I wanted to make felted booties, and was looking for Novita Huopanen Lampola –yarn, but my LYS didn’t carry it. Other colors available in the Novita Huopanen felt too bright for I had set my mind on some earthy colors. Novita Puro seemed to carry the type of color schemes I was searching, so I headed home with three skeins of Puro, instead. At home I realized I didn’t have the right size needles to use, but I did have a good size crochet hook. Quick search didn’t locate a pattern for me to use, so I wound up designing the booties from scratch myself. The long sliding color changes of the Puro yarn invited me to try to take advantage of them in the design. These were all the lucky coincidences that prompted me to design my very own Hissukkas.
YARN
Novita Puro. 100% wool, 50g/100 meters. (not available in the US). Three skeins.
HOOK
7 MM or US K – 10 ½. The finished work should feel loose or sloppy.
Size: Men’s
Approximate length and width of unfelted bootie: 13” by 7.5”

Instructions
Additions and reductions are generally given as ‘approximates’. Felting will hide most variations in shape. If you’re up to it, you can ‘bootie’ with your work to your liking.
Bottom piece
Crochet 30 chain (=ch).
Single crochet (sc) to each ch, except sc twice to last ch. Continue to the other side of your chain by SC twice to the first ch, sc all until last ch where you once again sc twice.
Continue your additions by adding two SC to approximately where the work turns around the corner, this is four times each row, approximately at the beginning and end of your turns. until you’ve sc 11 rows. Try to work your additions so that the piece becomes more or less a shape of an oval, like the shape of your foot. The shape is not precise. It will change dramatically during felting, but if you wind up with a lot of ‘cupping’ of your work at the rounded ends, space out the additions a little bit more.
After the 11th row, stop the additions, sc another 6 rows as the sides of the Hissukka. Your bottom piece is now ready, you can cut your yarn.
Top piece
Ch 15.
Continue additions as the bottom piece, but stop working in a circle and turn back at one end: One end will be rounded, the other straight. Continue in this fashion for 11 rows and finish. Watch for cupping of the rounded end as well.


Combining pieces
Position pieces together desired sides to the outside so, that the bottom tip has 8 sc more than the top piece. Use sc to attach the top piece to the bottom, paying careful attention to keep the work even except for the extra 8 at the tip. Try to combine these to the seam with spreading the extra sc evenly at the tip.

Cuff
This pattern used whatever remaining yarn was still available to sc a cuff into the foot opening. In these pictures there are 5 rows.
Sc in the cuff evenly to each ch. At the heel, reduce the number of stitches 1st and 2nd row for a total of 3 sc. In the corners where the top and bottom pieces meet, reduce 1 sc each corner each row. If you think the cuff is starting to look too high, finish your work.


Felting and shaping
You can felt wool in the washer by running it through warm/hot wash with a couple of jeans etc. You may need to do this repeatedly. If your machine doesn’t get very hot water, choose the hot wash instead. After washing, your booties may even felt too much and look very small. You can stretch wet felt over any mold, like small ladies’ shoes to reshape.
Project notes:
You can use the same pattern to make booties for ladies by felting the wool even more. If the cuff becomes too small, you can enlarge it by cutting a small slit in the middle of the top piece.
Text and images:
Sanna Kovanen
© Sanna Kovanen
Commercial use of this material categorically forbidden.



Please check original pattern for images here: http://www.ullaneule.net/0111/ohjeet_hissukka.html Hissukka
I wanted to make felted booties, and was looking for Novita Huopanen Lampola –yarn, but my LYS didn’t carry it. Other colors available in the Novita Huopanen felt too bright for I had set my mind on some earthy colors. Novita Puro seemed to carry the type of color schemes I was searching, so I headed home with three skeins of Puro, instead. At home I realized I didn’t have the right ...
Read full instructions »

---

Difficulty:

Category: Crocheting

Type of item: Accessory

For: Unisex

Style: Casual

---

Materials

Zitron Loft yarn, some leftover Novita Huopanen

What was your inspiration?

Honestly: I've gotten the Craftsy "Mystery box" now twice, and both times it has been such a major disappointment. Some clearly closeout bin yarns, and both times (nice, but unusable to me) SP needles. So, the contents of the box usually go directly to donations. In this case, the color scheme of the Loft yarn was so hideous, I couldn't imagine making anything wearable out of it, but it was perfect for felting. Felting in essence is total and aggressive abuse of the material: you reach your end result by "ruining" it. I've also felted a few times before (see my projects), and I'm still learning, so I won't use any expensive wool to do it until I feel more secure I understand the process better myself.

What are you most proud of?

I'm so happy that the colors bled into each other. It created the purplish tones into the finished work, and I kinda like these now!

What advice would you give someone starting this project?

Felting is harder than you think. It usually takes a long time and multiple washer runs before the fiber starts shrinking, and in my experience if you don't have a proper shape to use for drying, it can be very disappointing. I actually went straight to cooking these in boiling water on the stove, rather than run the machine repeatedly based on my previous experience about the process. That's also when the blending of the colors happened which was quite fun. My son thought I was mad. I told him I was making sock soup for tomorrow.

If you want to try felting, start with a container shape which you most likely already have in the household: Make a little cup or a bowl first to get the urge to felt out of your system, before you attempt something more elaborate, like a hat. These little booties are relatively easy, but I was thinking myself, that I'll probably go and purchase a cheap pair of crocs in a few sizes smaller than my actual shoe size just as a mold to use during drying if I do this gain. Which I very well might do: there was another two hanks of atrociously colored chunky wool in the same Craftsy box....