Anna, a former student of mine, is having a baby!  There hasn’t been a baby on my radar for a while so I am excited. I wanted to knit something for the new little person and give it to Anna at the baby shower.

Unfortunately, knitting has not been on my radar for a while either but I had made these particular little booties before and the instructions comes from a book called “Learn to Knit!” whose cover features a woman, smiling and relaxed with skeins of colorful wool under her arm and brandishing knitting needles.

The whole project felt jinxed from the beginning. I felt as though I was knitting with ten elbows instead of fingers. I lost track of where I was, in spite of noting the rounds with pen and paper. I pulled out rows, stich by stich, until I was sure of where I was. Passing my earlier stopping place, I noticed I had dropped a stitch five rounds earlier. In frustration, I pulled the whole thing out and began again. This happened two more times. I put the whole thing away and a week went by. The shower date was still three weeks away. I had plenty of time.

Did I mention that this was the month I was moving from my house of thirty years into a new living situation with my inamorato, Andrew? And a dog, Stella. I started the booties when the three of us were at the beach. They were supposed to be part of the relaxation of the week. Instead, they were part of what I went to the beach to relax from.

I brought the yarn and the needles and the happy woman on the cover of “Learn to Knit!” home from the beach. I was half moved into the new house, enough to be living there while I waited for the furniture move date. I settled in and started knitting while working my way through episodes of Matlock and Murder in Sandhamn. I finished the first bootie and started in on the second, feeling confidant. I knit happily away; you could have put me on the cover of “Learn to Knit!” I finished the second bootie. From a distance, they looked all tiny and cute like baby clothes look. Up close, one of them was quite a bit bigger and looser and seemed to have a few extra rows. It would have been perfect if there was a club foot involved. (I had recently re-read Of Human Bondage.)

I planned to give the booties to Anna as they were with no mention of a club foot, not to an expectant mother. I probably shouldn’t even have been thinking it. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt I was betraying my artistic/creative integrity. I didn’t have enough yarn left for another bootie and due to the obsessive way I weave the yarn in at the end, I didn’t think I could pull it out and re-use it and I was now out of yarn. The shower was two days away. I still had time. I bought another skein from The Tea Cozy.

On this third bootie, I was scrupulously careful to follow every line of the instructions. I wasn’t sure which of the first two booties correctly reflected the instructions but I was counting on the third one matching one of them. I knit all morning long the day before the shower. With 6 rounds to go, I fell asleep over Matlock.

Knitting the booties ought to have been straightforward. But there was this minor distraction that I was moving and my life was changing: I had been thrown into new routines, my belongings were scattered from one end of the zip code to the other and boxes were piling up in my new living space. I had limited range in one arm and pain in both arms from carrying boxes.

I finished Bootie number #3 the evening before the baby shower during an episode of Murder in Sandhamn. I could tell right away that something was wrong with it, something much worse than just being a little bigger than Bootie #1. It didn’t even look like a foot covering. More like a tiny football.

I put it all away, discouraged and went to the shower with a lame IOU. A few weeks passed, my furniture moved into the new house, boxes were unpacked. I set out to knit Bootie #4. It did not match any of the previously knitted booties. Neither did Bootie # 5. By then I was out of yarn. None of them were quite right. None of them. Though I followed the directions as exactly as I knew how. And I am not a beginner knitter. I have knit upwards of 50 pairs of socks. But these little baby booties have defeated me.

I am going to pack up all five of them and send them to Anna and John with a copy of this post. I might keep back the little deformed one. It would go perfectly on a golfing friend’s driver. I kind of looks like that’s what it’s for.

Epilogue: This post was written in October. Anna had her baby November 29