Experimentation

How often is crafting an experiment? Often you don’t know quite how a project will turn out, because it’s always a new combination of variables. If it’s something you’re knitting/crocheting, there’s always a unique combination of needle/hook, yarn, and pattern. Even if those three are constants from another project, there’s always the intangible amount of tension – how is the humidity affecting the movement of yarn through your fingers? How is the rough day at work making you knit tighter than before? Or the really good day making the yarn loose and quick around the needles? It’s always an adventure, and hopefully a fun one.

Then you get into the completely new projects, and it all becomes an experiment. My task this time, if I chose to accept it, was to turn these perfectly lovely but very purple sandals (worn for the wedding in Texas, and quite spotted by the rain we had) into perfectly lovely black sandals.

Anyone who’s had to get dyeable shoes knows they’re crazy expensive for what you’re getting - often oddly stiff, uncomfortable, one-time wear shoes. In order to beat the system I wanted to make these a bit more color friendly, so I could use them again for another wedding and possibly more regularly after that. So the next challenge – how to make them black.

Helpful fact – fabric covers all parts of these sandals but the soles. Any kind of fabric dye, or something that permanently stains fabric should work. I contemplated using Rit dye and some sort of applicator – a small brush, cotton ball, something like that. Problems? Messy, and no great way to set the dye. Next thought, at the suggestion of my mom, was shoe polish. She had some liquid shoe polish, in a bottle with a dauber-like applicator, which just might do the trick. And did it ever.

The dauber helped control the mess, although I still wish I had a glove for the hand holding the shoe. Wrapping my hand in a plastic bag just wasn’t quite as easy.

I still had to keep paper towels handy to wipe off the inner soles of the sandals, and the inside of the straps. A couple of q-tips helped get the inside of the bows, and around the fiddly bits of the straps. I can still tell where there are purple spots peeking through the black (which, pre-second coat still looks a bit on the navy side).

Overall, though, a success! Even my supervisor approves . . .