Knitting bootees in autumn: getting ready for a first winter with two needles

Mehmet Emde was born in İstanbul, and as his first winter approached I noticed something: none of my four boys’ bootees matched. Süleyman Taha’s had been knitted in Konya by his aunt. Muammer Esat’s by my mother. Hamza Bera’s we had bought ready-made in the chaos of moving. Mehmet Emde had none.

In the first week of October my mother arrived with two needles and two balls of yarn in her bag. “This time you knit,” she said. “I’ll only count.”

Why bootees come first

Anyone who takes up knitting starts with a patik — a baby bootee. A jumper takes weeks; a scarf never seems to end. A bootee is finished in an evening. It is small, a mistake can be unravelled and redone, and when it is done you are holding something real: a thing that will go on a baby’s foot.

Then there is the timing. Autumn is knitting’s season; the evenings shorten, life turns indoors, hands want something to do. And if there is a baby, and that baby’s first winter is coming, the hands think of the feet first. A bootee is the smallest way of saying “winter is coming, and you are ready”.

One who counts, one who knits

Through those October evenings my mother counted and I knitted. “Twelve stitches. Now purl two. Pick one up.” I was learning to hold needles; she had learned half a century earlier. Both of us under the lamp, in silence, while Mehmet Emde slept.

The first bootee was a disaster. The right side bigger than the left, the heel askew. My mother looked at it and said, “He’ll wear it.” He did. The second was a little straighter. The third pair was finished in November, and that pair is still here.

I think that is knitting’s secret: nothing comes out right the first time, and it doesn’t matter in the least. The baby doesn’t know the bootee is crooked. The only one who knows is the one who knitted it — and years later, looking at the crooked heel, she remembers the evening.

Two needles, one ball, one evening

Very little is needed. One ball of baby yarn — soft, non-itchy, washable. Two needles, thick ones, so it goes quickly. And someone to count. If there is no one, the phone can count; but it is far better when there is someone.

My mother said something as she left: “Knitting the bootee is easy. The hard part is not throwing it away when the foot outgrows it.” She was right. Mehmet Emde’s third pair is in a box; his feet outgrew them long ago.

Starting to knit in a Turkish autumn

• Ask for bebe yünü. Every tuhafiye knows the difference: baby yarn is soft, hypoallergenic and machine-washable. For colour, dusty rose, cream, sage — they all go together.
• Thick needles, medium yarn. Size 4–5 needles and a mid-weight yarn: a bootee in an evening, and the motivation survives.
• A person, not a video. You can learn bootees from YouTube; but learn from a grandmother and the bootee belongs to two people.
• Halk Eğitim knitting courses open in October, with enrolment at the end of September. If nobody in the neighbourhood knits, start there.
• Keep the first pair. The crooked one. The good pairs get worn; the crooked one gets remembered.

One more thing to keep beside the bootees

The first winter’s bootees go into the box, and the other small things of that winter go in with them. But let there be something outside the box too, on a shelf or a wall — something that says every day whose winter it was.

The four facts of a first winter, in one keepsake

Name, birth date, weight and length, kept for good on a palm-sized keepsake that sits on the shelf beside the bootee box.

Add their name

The third pair

This October the basket will come out again. My mother no longer counts; I count, and Hamza Bera knits. His first bootee will be crooked. “He’ll wear it,” I will say. Because that is how I was taught.

— Merve Çokal Doğan