sarah in nyc

 My feet are, as or dear friend Father Blute, used to say, "My cross to bear".  Unless they are perfectly shod, they get cranky and let me know what is wrong in no uncertain terms. I have owned the boots pictured below for many years.  I bought them , a vintage pair of Larry Mahan boots at an online auction. They are really comfortable. Unfortunately the delicate snakeskin on the foot part of the boot has begun to break. I had repaired two other pairs of boots a couple of years ago by covering broken leather with leather patches put in place with barge glue. I did the same operation again last night, but instead of using the thin and flexible metallic leather that I had used for the patches above, I pulled out a heavy olive green skin that I had purchased somewhere a really long time ago. Last time I draped newspaper over my boot tops to create a pattern. This time I was more clever and taped strips of painters tape over the boot parts that needed to be patched. I careful...

Erin on www.dressaday.com did an entry today about her many pairs of penny loafers. I think I have owned two pairs of penny loafers in my lifetime. What I do wear on my feet is cowboy boots. This is my collection of cowboy boots. This is actually the bulk of my shoe collection. You may wonder why this Boston-bred New Yorker wears cowboy boots. The simple answer is comfort. I have wide feet. Finding women's shoes that fit my feet and don't depress me isn't an easy task. While the default width for women's shoes is a B, the default width for men's shoes is a D. I wear a D. I suppose I could wear lace up oxfords, but that would be simply depressing. These boots are all men's boots. The cowboy boots look fun , work well with skirts and feel good on my feet. Because my foot is a relatively small one for a man, I can usually find boots on sale. because men tend not to go for flash, I can usually get a funky pair. Life in cold weather is good. I'm now tran...

For the last few days I have been alternating my time between finishing my son's bar-mitzvah invitation which mostly involved lots of fussing with the computer and working on the Torah mantle. Usually I avoid hand work, but this piece is mostly made by hand. I added lots of beads over the past couple of days. The sanctuary in my synagogue is huge and the piece needs to sparkle or it will just get lost. Thus the vast quantity of beads. I decided to construct the mantle and then fit it onto the padded wooden form. I am attaching the mantle to the form with rows of beads that look kind of like fringe. I hadn't planned on the fringe, but it looks cute. The photo is fuzzy I will take more pictures in day light so all of you can obsess with how great it is along with me. My older son was nice enough to hold the mantle up for me so I could take a photo. He got tired, otherwise I would have taken more pictures. But yes, I am grateful that he was willing to do this boring task for me....