These sweet baby boots are named for Scotland’s Balmoral Castle, a favorite country home of Queen Victoria. Her majesty was apparently not a very skilled knitter, but these gorgeous highlands-inspired bootikins from the late Victorian era seem like something she would have loved to offer her grandbabies.

A re-enactor’s delight! A thoughtful addition to the layette of a wee bairn of Scottish ancestry! A unique and beautiful baby shower gift! A practical bootie for cold-weather babies!

This is a modernized and simplified version of an 1886 Weldon’s pattern. My version is one-piece, knitted from the fancy cast-on at the top to a graft at the center of the sole.

These are high, newborn-size booties with gorgeous stitch textures and anatomical calf shaping. While my version of this pattern is MUCH more straightforward than the original Victorian version, these ornate little things are still somewhat complicated to work. However, an adventurous intermediate knitter should have no problems.

Skills needed: knitting, purling, decreases, increases, yarn-over, slip stitches, pick up stitches, grafting.

If you are economical with your yarn, you should be able to squeeze two pairs of these little darlings from one skein of KPPPM.