Some little booties to go with the most recent bear hats for my little grandsons.

4/13 So, I’ve decided to leave the booties plain instead of making them look like bear paws - in the end I didn’t really care for how it looked, sometimes simpler is just better :0)
4/16 Silly me, I was worried these would be too big - turns out they are a touch small - time to make more!

Medium brown booties knit on size US 2 for a 3” length. Dark brown booties knit on size US 1.5 for a 2.75” length.

I used the Baby Booties pattern up to where stitches are bound off for the strap (Row 30), and instead I did two more decrease rounds until 31 stitches remained. I then worked two additional rounds and divided for the button strap, leaving 7 stitches from back center for the button tab, and casting on 9 stitches for the buttonhole strap (on opposite sides for each bootie). Button hole made by casting off/on 3 stitches, buttonhole strap done over a total of 14 rows. After dividing to work back and forth, every last stitch purled, every first stitch slipped as if to knit. When moving from knitting in the round to knitting flat -to maintain garter stitch it is necessary to switch between knitting and purling at center back.

Booties knit in the round instead of flat, which is really simple to do, simply join in the round after casting on and reverse directions to purl every other row instead of knitting all rows.