I spent months and months last year looking for someone to do a leatherwork/shoe making apprenticeship with to no avail. The only apprenticeships I found that made sense were a woman in Ireland, a couple in England and of course, tons of courses in Italy... but the grant I was applying for got rejected for "being too far away to justify". I pretty much gave up the idea of finding someone in the states. Then, just last month, I found a local shoe maker that is willing to let me apprentice under him which is super rad and exciting! (More on that later...)
I was telling an acquaintance about it and she mentioned that she heard there was a "shoe last library in San Francisco that you can check lasts out for a month at a time"
I went home and googled "shoe last library" - no results.
What I DID accidentally find through that search was a shoe making school in Port Townsend WA, which happens to be a favorite place of mine to visit up North in the Olympic Peninsula. Crazy. How did I not find that in all of my searching last year?
I never did find the ostensible "shoe last library" but I did call the number for the shoe school and did talk to one seemingly grumpy dude who runs the place. While he gave me his rundown about the program, he mentioned that "everyone has to stay at the blahblah hotel and it's $__ a night... I thought that was WEIRD. That you HAVE to stay with all of the other students at this particular hotel, like it's a children's camp or something.
I protested.
He was indignant.
"Look, This is my ship, and I'm the captain and this is how it works and how it's always worked. You don't like it, you don't have to take the class."
Jeeeez buddy. Alright already.
Long story short, I actually liked the old fart by the end of our conversation. Fact is, Port Townsend is a town run by a bunch of old eccentric hippies and that's part of it's charm. I also have an appreciation for "difficult" people a.k.a. wierdos/eccentrics/opinionated assholes/etc.
In any case, I'm re-applying for the grant.
Fingers crossed, I will be apprenticing with this local shoe maker in the winter/spring (or sooner? I don't want to jinx anything) and maybe even take a shoe making class in Port Townsend at some point in the future.
In the meantime, I decided to try my hand at a simple pair of sandals just for fun. Not bad for a little side project.
I was telling an acquaintance about it and she mentioned that she heard there was a "shoe last library in San Francisco that you can check lasts out for a month at a time"
I went home and googled "shoe last library" - no results.
What I DID accidentally find through that search was a shoe making school in Port Townsend WA, which happens to be a favorite place of mine to visit up North in the Olympic Peninsula. Crazy. How did I not find that in all of my searching last year?
I never did find the ostensible "shoe last library" but I did call the number for the shoe school and did talk to one seemingly grumpy dude who runs the place. While he gave me his rundown about the program, he mentioned that "everyone has to stay at the blahblah hotel and it's $__ a night... I thought that was WEIRD. That you HAVE to stay with all of the other students at this particular hotel, like it's a children's camp or something.
I protested.
He was indignant.
"Look, This is my ship, and I'm the captain and this is how it works and how it's always worked. You don't like it, you don't have to take the class."
Jeeeez buddy. Alright already.
Long story short, I actually liked the old fart by the end of our conversation. Fact is, Port Townsend is a town run by a bunch of old eccentric hippies and that's part of it's charm. I also have an appreciation for "difficult" people a.k.a. wierdos/eccentrics/opinionated assholes/etc.
In any case, I'm re-applying for the grant.
Fingers crossed, I will be apprenticing with this local shoe maker in the winter/spring (or sooner? I don't want to jinx anything) and maybe even take a shoe making class in Port Townsend at some point in the future.
In the meantime, I decided to try my hand at a simple pair of sandals just for fun. Not bad for a little side project.
Used my favorite pair of bass leather top flipflops for the base outline.. Cut the top layer from vegetable tanned leather and used a stiff, thick piece of black leather for the bottom.
I used the left over veg tan scrap from cutting out the bottoms for the top piece, I tooled the pattern in using a spackle trowel (haha... no, seriously) then rubbed in a little stain to darken it. I realized that I should sew the edges around the top piece after I'd already put the 1st sandal together. oh well. Asymmetry rules.
Industrial cementing the pieces.. Once I glued it all together, I skived the edges flat and burnished them with some "leather rich" and a piece of heavy canvas.
so far so good...?
sewing it all up...
Done! (Notice the top stitching on only one of the sandals.)
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