Julestrømper

Now that it is well into January, most of Longyearbyen has begun to dismantle the Christmas decorations. However, the big hotel is still hosting Julebord dinners every weekend until the end of the month, so perhaps it's not too late for me to post a couple Jul-related items I meant to share… Let's start with this year's Christmas stockings:

Careful of the hole in the heel, Santa! 

Yipes!  Clearly, my Christmas present to myself needed to be yet another new pair of somethings to keep my feet warm inside my boots!  I stand by my recipe for Svalbard Socks, but must acknowledge that the way I wear them every single ding-dang day is shredding the heel very quickly.  Despite the fact that it's reinforced!  Golly, how did people keep themselves covered in the olden days?  I can barely finish one project before the last one is busting it's seams again.  Hopefully, it's just the hard arctic living that is thwarting my efforts to self-clothe.  Anyway, I decided to give it one more effort before resorting to buying a manufactured boot liner.  So here was my point of inspiration:

Either the ugliest baby suit on the planet, or a really great bear costume for a baby.

This baby onesie arrived at the Bruktikken one Saturday when I was deep in a cleaning project there, trying to get rid of some of our excess items so that people can actually see the higher-quality things we have that are very much worth taking home (for free!).  Between the color and the wavy zipper, I was pretty sure this was another item that would be more easily trashed than treasured in it's present state.  The material, however, is a nice, dense wool felt… and so I got to thinking, maybe I could take it apart and rearrange it to fit my feet.

Step 1: Cut out the trims and zipper, and then cut off the legs and arms.

Baby legs are the same size as my shins!

After successfully shearing off the legs and discovering that they make great stove-pipes for my
slippers, it was time for a dinner break.  This is my current favorite easiest dinner ever invented: quinoa with roasted tomatoes and kidney beans.  Literally, all I do is half some cherry tomatoes and open a can of kidney beans, toss all that in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast on 230 degrees C (about 400 degrees F) until the tomatoes are blistering and things have gotten a bit juicy and sizzling.  Simultaneously, I set up some quinoa to cook in veggie stock, and when they are both ready I toss it all together.  It's so good!

Easy-peasy quinoa-tomato-kidney bean dinner.  Yum!

OK, stomach full, back to the work at hand…

Experiment 1: Can the sleeves work as feet?  A: Nei.

Experiment 2… something like this?

Experiments with draping various parts of the baby suit over my feet finally revealed a method that made sense.  I stuck my ankles through the armholes of the baby suit, and made a semi-circular seam along the outer edge of each foot.  This created a comfortable seam-less sole, and a kind of impish silhouette to the design.  I feel like an elf when I wear them.  Once the feet were sewn to fit, I eased in the stove-pipes like you would sleeves to a shoulder.

Ta-da!!

Tyler helps hold up my elf shoes for proud display.

So, now my toes have one more layer to help keep them warm.  As a bonus, I can wear them over even my Svalbard Socks, which keeps the friction of my foot inside the boot from further eroding that sorry heel-hole.  Maybe one day I will learn how to properly darn things.  Until then, I have a second pair of Svalbard Socks on my possible to-do list, in anticipation of a lively spring here in the arctic.  Because PS: Tyler and I bought a snøskooter!  All the sights of Spitsbergen are all only an intrepid ride away now… 

Tyler doing his best impression of a dork, by his own definition.

From Nybyen, looking back through the ghostly valley into town.