About a year ago, one of my knitting students brought me a well-loved slipper that her mother made her about 30 years ago. She asked me if it would be possible to write a pattern from it. I did my best. Then, about a week later, a friend of mine dropped an old booklet on my desk.

The Bernhard Ulmann Co. gave these slippers the charming name of “Slippers No. 2260” in Bucilla Vol. 340, which cost $3.50 in 1976. The pattern is probably at least as old as 1950, and if anyone hunts around enough, I’m sure they will find several versions. I’ve already heard many charming stories of people learning how to knit with this pattern, which I absolutely adore!

I thought the pattern would be perfect for my beginning knitting students, so I tried just photocopying it for them. As we worked through it, together, however, I found several ways to make the pattern easier to use and, frankly, more fun to knit.

So, I rewrote it. Our beloved, invented-in-the-1980’s ssk didn’t exist at the time, so I added that in. I also added some slipped stitches at the beginning of most of the rows, to make the top edge of the slipper a little neater. I’m also not crazy about counting stitches on every other row, so I put in stitch markers to keep my place. To be nice to our friends everywhere, I’ve also added metric measurements.

Also, the pattern isn’t crammed into a space the size of my iPhone. Thank goodness for that!