Bordhi-nized room shoes

When I first made Cat Bordhi's "Discovery" socks, I was afraid of snipping the yarn in the middle of my knitting.  After I made a couple of garments with steeks, I still have my fears.
Can I open the "mouth" without cutting ?

I have been thinking of making a pair of room shoes for warmth all along this autumn/winter, say, for three months.  I was eyeing a nice knit/crochet pattern, but I had almost used up my colorful bits and pieces of fingering yarns suitable for it (they turned into armwarmers).  And, I wanted my shoes to be practical if not fancy.  It can be in awful acrylic or anything, if it stays on my feet snugly and keep them warm.
Then, "stays on my feet" rang the bell.

What if I made just the foot part of Cat Bordhi socks, in thick acrylic?
And if I crochet them, I could open the mouth with chain loop without cutting, with a bonus of a speedy finish!

So the project began, at around 9:30 AM.

1. Start circularly, making increases every other round or so, to cover your toe.
(I like slip-stitch my final sc on the first ch to finish the round, by the way.  You can spiral up the rounds if it suits you.)


2. Once the circumference reaches your foot circumference, just crochet up to "leg" line, adding increases if needed.  The yarn was worsted-weight-ish thick, so I only made a 2 sts and a 4 sts increase once each.

3. Fun part made easy.  When you reach the leg line, make 1 ch st like you start every round (for sc), and add half the numbers of one round chain stitches.  I had 36 stitches, so I made (1 + 18) = 19 chain stitches.

And attach on the opposite side of the round with sc. Continue in sc like former rounds to the end of the round.

4. Crochet on the chain, 1 sc on 1 ch, for the first half and sc on for the second half of the next round.


5. Continue up to "heel" line.


6. Make decreases to finish the heel, just reversing the toe making process.


And Voila!  A shoe.


I added picot edging around the mouth, to strengthen the sides where instep and heel meets, and to make it a bit cuter.  I should have used, say, white yarn for edging to make it even cuter.

It took less than 3 hours for one shoe for me, including taking notes and ripping a round or two here and there.

Naturally, the second shoe was finished a lot faster and a bit tighter (my crochet skill is not as good as my knitting).

See the right one is a bit smaller?

Still, I'm satisfied that I finished before my daughter comes home from school at 3:00PM.  Warm feet make a happy smiling mom.

I think this is going to be one of my "no-pattern-patterns" which I can work whenever, wherever I got enough yarn and a matching needles & hooks.
(And my Personal Footprint, to make my world easy.)