These are the new version of a pair of War Bride Booties that belong to a friend of mine in my knitting class at OLLI. She wore them on her own baby feet when she came to America on the ship with her mother who was a war bride from England. They have tiny name tags sewn into the backs to identify them and to avoid confusion. Evidently there were other babies on the boat and the washing was communal. I have reversed engineered a pattern for them, at their owner's request. I will be posting that pattern on my pattern page.
These are the originals. Both pair are made up with natural white merino wool but, as you can see, the 70 odd years have yellowed the original wool to an old ivory color. I am giving my friend a copy of the pattern in case she wants to make up some duplicates of her own to give to her wee loved ones. These are too fragile and precious to use now. But isn't it a miracle that she still has them. I love to think of them being knit up in England, with the name tags sewn in with tiny hand stitches. And I love to think of them on her kicking pink baby feet. And I also love that she has kept them tenderly wrapped and kept all these years like the precious articles that they are.
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