Innesko: Part 2, A Bruktikken Success Story!

Remember these?  Well, I have more to say about them.

They also have red leather soles!!!

In my last post, I gave you the story of why it felt important (pun intended!) to have a pair of innesko for the coming winter in arctic Norway.  Winter is coming, by the way... woke up to the first proper dusting of snow this morning!  Lovely.  Much has melted off during the course of the day, but not all.  Anyway, soon enough, we will be in all white, and I will be sporting my innesko a lot, enjoying cozy indoor activities.  I wanted to make sure my innesko would last a little longer than the first few weeks of the season, so I knew I wanted to give them some leather soles if possible.  ...But how could I make that possible?

Well, again, I could have tried to search for a piece of hide for sale.  Skinnbode would be the local go-to for buying seal skin, reindeer pelts, or an entire musk-ox with horns and skull cap if you like... but this was about not buying things outright where possible (not to mention the prices are a bit out of my range, even working at Norwegian wages).  SO.  Could I hunt down my own prey, tan the hide, and make the soles from that?  The unsurprising answer is: sorry, no.  Certainly not in time for that fast-coming winter, and probably not personally for a lot longer than that.  One could do those things here in Svalbard, it must be said, but I am ill-equipped and ill-inclined towards such an endeavor.  Besides which, lining the bottom of a pair of slippers seems a flimsy excuse for shooting and killing an entire animal.  Surely, the respectable hunter would also be feasting on the meat, maybe using the antlers for something clever, and tanning and treasuring the hide for more than just a couple scrap pieces of leather for trodding on.

So what is a good piece of leather to use for scrap?  How about a piece of leather that was going to end up in the garbage?  Like this here lonely leather glove, missing it's mate and a bit worn in the finger tips anyway...

For a sad little glove, she's got a lovely hue!!

This little baby came straight out of my first shift at the Bruktikken, Longyearbyen's treasure trove.   When I first arrived in Svalbard in early June, temperatures were still a bit crisp with spring chill, and Tyler and I were heading out on an eleven day expedition around the wilds of the archipelago by ship.  I expected that I would need a decent pair of waterproof, warm pants, but did not have any in my thriftily packed bag.  I was reluctant to spring for a new pair of waterproof bibs for nothing less than 3000NOK (roughly $500USD) partly because the price was steep in comparison to my wallet, but also because, as I explained in my last post, I had no idea if I was just going to want to unload them eleven days later when I got off the boat (the bakery job, with it's paycheck and promise of several more months in an arctic climate, were still only hazy loomings in the future).  Anyway, imagining that there might be other travelers who had fallen into such a trap themselves and then had wanted to unload their basically-new outdoor gear, I started asking around at the hotels to see if anyone had left behind a pair of waterproof pants, maybe in my size, which the kind person working as a desk clerk might just like to gift to me, a shameless mooch of a tourist.  ...Uh, yea right.  BUT!  It never hurts to ask!  One kind man did do me the honor of not immediately judging me a lunatic, and let me in on a local secret: there is a little grey shack in downtown Svalbard where you can go to hunt through bins and bins of other people's unwanted things, and take them away to a new home for free.  Not just tax-free, totally free... I found it, and they had snow pants!  A little bit big, but warm and cozy nonetheless.  

Ever since I first found the Bruktikken, it has been my one-stop shop for all our little hopes and dreams.  I also scored an immersion blender, to Tyler's delight, which has resulted in the making of some scratch curry pastes and other delights to which I am thrilled to be a party to.  But my red innesko soles are my personal favorite score to date.  First of all, there is the basic fun of getting something you need easily, and for free.  Second, how perfect is that color with that little bit of red in my innesko???  I couldn't have matched it better if I had ordered swatches off the Internet.  Chance wins again!  Merce Cunningham and John Cage would be so pleased!

But I really do especially love the third point in my list of awesome: this glove was otherwise basically only fit for the trash bin.  And now it has a second life!  I can't save all unloved things that come into the Bruktikken, but saving a thing here or there feels nice.  It's a great reminder of what is possible when you just stop and think "wait a second... what can be done, here?"  I am so tickled by the success of this venture, and I am really excited to think of other ways I can use the Bruktikken not only as my personal free-stuff boutique, but my personal free craft-supplier.  More stories will hopefully follow in the coming months; but for now, let's look at what I did with the glove:

Time for a makeover, sad little glove.

First, I unpicked all the seams.  This was made possible by a seam-ripper I found inexplicably included in a random box of tools in my pastry area at the bakery.  I don't know how that will ever come in handy at work, but boy am I glad to have it at home!  Unpicking the seams is not only pretty fun, it also yields a much broader volume of material when you unfurl hems and un-cinch elastic to reveal the broad, flat original pieces of the item.

Flat feet.

Then, I placed the innesko on top of the two largest pieces of leather I salvaged and traced around the outer sole.  When I cut the pieces out, I added a generous quarter-inch seam allowance all the way around. When I sewed them on my innesko, I gently rolled this under before sewing down the soles with a somewhat barbaric-looking primitive catch-stitch.  I am not ashamed; sewing through leather by hand is hard enough without perfection on the brain.

And after that, I took a look at my scraps and thought, surely there is something I can do with this other than throw it all out...

Something of a dream come true in only fifty minutes...

 Ah-hah!  I made myself some leather thimbles I have been coveting for quite a while.  Leather is a perfect material for a thimble, because you can still feel what you are doing in your fingertips through the material, but you stand some protection from sudden needle jabs and so on.  These two little thimbles are for my index finger and thumb, and I also cut a little rectangle from another bit of scrap just to use as a gripping aid, should I decide to use my metal thimble for anything, and need a little tool to grip the needle in when trying to pull it through while stitching.  I find the entire aesthetic of handwork incredibly charming, right down to the tools, but I have never before had tools for handwork that I made by hand!  I am so pleased.  That said, I didn't think through the design in a very complex way, and having the seam run right along the fingertip on that one thimble is proving to be problematic, as the needle sometimes jabs backwards right between the stitching.  But there is someone else who has thought this through extremely well-- this is the pattern I will try if I decide to go back and redo this little mini-project (and hey, guess what! she even recommends using a sad, lonely glove for your scrap leather!).

Finally, look what was waiting for me outside when I finally looked up from the table:

Oh, thank you, Earth.