Crochet Sweater Boots with Flip Flop Soles - Part 3

Now, I've placed two stitch markers right at the edge, sort of where the shoe begins to flatten out for this front part. So these are eight stitches apart. And regardless of what size you're making, you should be able to put these eight stitches apart and get about the curve that you need going back to your ankle. So for row 11, I'm going to single crochet in each of these stitches all the way to stopping when I get to this last stitch before the marker. Okay, I'm working the last stitch before the marker. This time we're working all the way up to the marker and I'm going to remove the marker and do a single crochet decrease in the next two stitches. So that's single crochet two together, just like we did on the sole. So I'm going to pull a loop through one stitch, pull a loop through the next stitch, and then yarn over and pull through both of those. So I've decreased by one stitch and I'm going to put my marker back in the top of the stitch I created. So not the loop that's on my hook, but the stitch that's actually on the crocheted fabric right there. Then I'm going to single crochet to the next marker in the same way. All right, I stopped at the stitch right before the marker and I'm going to do a single crochet two together in the next two stitches and place the marker back in the top of the stitch I created. And then I'm going to single crochet all the way to the end back by the heel. All right, so now we're back at the heel here and for rows 12 through 17, the next six rows, we're going to repeat what we did for 11. So that's going to be single crocheting in every stitch all the way to the marker, taking the marker out to do single crochet two together in those two stitches, putting the marker back in the stitch that you create, single crocheting all the way over until the marked stitch, removing the marker, single crocheting two together in the next two stitches, placing the marker back in the stitch you create, and then single crocheting to the back of the heel. So let's do that six times. Now as you work on rows 12 through 17, I want to offer a little bit of guidance on getting the boot to fit your foot how you want it to. So if you can see here, we're shaping this back and what I'm aiming to do is have it follow the curve of my foot back to my ankle. But if you think about the number of stitches on the sole is directly related to how many holes you poked. So if you happen to poke your holes a little bit closer together, you might find out that you have more stitches per inch than you actually need, which could cause your boot to come out a little bit more. And similarly, if you have too few stitches, it could be really tight on your foot. So let's talk about what happens if it's too loose. This would be a good time to try it on. I've done 13 rows, I'm on row 13 here, and when I try it on, if it's feeling a little bit too loose, like too far above my foot, it would be a good time to do a couple extra decreases, maybe like right here and right here, to help bring this curve back and closer to touching my foot. Also, if you're finding at any point that the boot is just too tight on your toes and the top of your foot, you could always increase kind of evenly by just single crocheting two stitches in the same stitch. So that's a way that you can either decrease the total number of stitches you have on your boot or increase depending on how the shape of it is going. In this case, this is fitting my foot pretty well, so I'm going to just continue as I described by decreasing at each of the stitch markers to help it come back and we'll meet the ankle part where we'll start working upward. Okay, so I've just finished row 17, and as you can see, by doing the decreases, I've brought my markers into stitches that are now touching. And for row 18, we're just going to single crochet in each stitch all the way around so we can get rid of the markers. But if you try on your boot and you feel like it's still a little bit too loose around your ankle, feel free to decrease right here using the two marked stitches to bring it just a little bit tighter to your ankle.