design spotlight

There’s a wild wind blowing around Kintyre today – but it’s cosy here in the mill.

These are my Slippers Bellew – a pattern from our new Mysterious Knits book, which is named for a character in Margery Allingham’s Dancers in Mourning (1937). I knitted my prototypes in Milarrochy Tweed shades Hirst and Outsea, then Kate C tested the pattern, marling Cranachan and Snapdragon together, to create a super-intense red, great for nimble dancing feet . . .

As well as being quick to whip up, slippers are wonderful small canvases to work with when developing a pattern that’s both knitterly and intriguing (one of my aims with the Mysterious Knits designs). Here are a few of my favourite slipper-y shapes that I’ve enjoyed working with over the years:

Slippers Bellew merely modifies what I think of as the simplest of all slipper shapes: the folded foot envelope that in Shetland and other parts of Scotland were once called rivlins. Once the everyday footwear of ordinary people all over the north Atlantic world, a pair of hide rivlins were found with the body of this now-famous seventeenth-century man, discovered in a Shetland peat bog in 1951.

The Gunnister Man’s rivlin deploys two vertical “seams” to make a simple envelope from a flat piece of fabric: one across the top of his foot and another at the back of his heel. Like his rivlins, my Slippers Bellew are worked flat. While the Gunnister Man’s rivlins used threaded cord to seam and reinforce his footwear, mine are also finished using a simple corded method which combines the three-needle with the i-cord bind off. Though not a sophisticated shape, it certainly makes for a super-comfy, very sturdy slipper.

Slippers Bellew are worked toe-up. Similarly, my Baffies begin by casting on at the tip of the toe, but here you use a winding cast on and work the foot in the round, as if starting off a sock.

When the ankle is reached, stitches are divided, and the heel is worked back and forth, and seamed.

I used a similar construction when designing Esk, one of my favourite pairs of slippers that also features a toe-up construction, a neat corded finish and a sturdy garter stitch heel.

I’m fond of a toe-up for these designs, largely because trying on the foot before dividing for the heel can really help you adjust a slipper’s relative size (and roominess). For something that’s being worn around the house, and which is knitted from a thicker, more hard-wearing fabric, you often want a little more positive ease than with a pair of socks. Featuring a two-tone braid and stranded colourwork, my Bieldy slippers are also worked toe-up . . .

. . with a conventional turned heel.

. . .and fully-adjustable construction to fit feet of all sizes.

A less conventional heel is found on my Pouzle slippers, which (yes) are also worked toe-up.

Pouzle is so-called because the construction might seem a little puzzling: there’s definitely a point in the knitting where it feels as if you are knitting a weird miniature-sleeping bag . . .

. . .but then you insert some waste yarn, and and all becomes clear.

Pouzle uses an afterthought ankle opening to eventually enable a pair of feet to slip inside its mini sleeping bag shape. An afterthought heel can be used similarly, in top down designs . . .

. . . and I’ve featured afterthought heels on a few different patterns for cosy house socks – including Fittygomash . . .

. . . and Maria Jones.

With the afterthought method, you can position a plain heel at any convenient point in the colourwork. The narrow patterned bands which I used for Maria Jones mean that heel-placing opportunities abound, and that, whatever your foot length, your house socks will always look balanced as well as fitting really well.

Hazel Tindall once showed me a pair of colourwork slippers with a fabulous construction to which (I think) a Norwegian visitor had introduced her. Knitted in two shades, and two different small-scale colourwork motifs, these slippers were worked as two seamless envelopes which then fitted together, each inside the other, so that their ‘wrong’ side was never seen. SO nifty! Hmm . . . I’m pretty sure there must be a way of joining two Pouzles together to create Hazel’s super-sophisticated rivlins . . . . perhaps I’ll try to work it out . . . .

Stranded colourwork slippers are, I think, especially aesthetically appealing, but slippers are also just items of everyday comfort, bringing joy to our feet and our domestic spaces. I think that it’s this combination of ordinariness and intimacy, with the capacity to be tiny, elegant works of art, that makes a pair of slippers to me such an enjoyable thing to both knit and to design.

And wearing slippers can be fun too, of course.

What’s your favourite slipper construction? Tell me!

Mentioned in this post:

Slippers Bellew from Mysterious Knits

Baffies from Buachaille

Esk from Sark (new edition coming soon!)

Bieldy from Ten Years in the Making

Pouzle and Fittygomash from Allover

Maria Jones from Argyll’s Secret Coast