Shoe success - for now

After a little bit of a setback I think I'm actually on the right track with these.

 

So there is the sad sketch of what I wanted. The green leather on top, blue underneath and accents. Trust me it looks fabulous in my head. 

And so I tried. 

The first thing was to figure out what the blue leather part was going to be over the top. After hours of fiddling I finally decided it would just get sewed down, with no padding - just a turn in.

I had hoped I could do it with my sewing machine but, no. Not strong enough. So I used buttonhole silk, and punched the holes myself to sew the turn over. 

 

I hope that this seam will not pose a problem. I don't want the sewing to come unraveled.

The next step is to anchor the bottom accent. The blue leather that would go around the base of the shoe, and hide any imperfections of the upper.

What seemed a good idea at the time was actually...not.  

I went to fold over the blue leather and tack it down in place  - and it bunched.  No Good. 

Also - I made some booboos. At the back and three in the toe:

 

I don't really think I need to explain how problematic something like this is. 

All of this was very discouraging. I left the shoes on Wednesday in a huff, thinking I had done a bad thing. But today I decided to remove the blue leather accent by the base of the shoe. And I think it was a good decision: 

 

I am still a bit concerned about the kind of leather I've used. I'm not sure it will hold up to a lot of wear. However, I figure, it these don't work out, I can always replace them with something else. The wood needs a nice coat of polyurethane and then I think it will be lovely.

Yep - not so bad, eh? Let's see how many wears they will survive...

Must make the other shoe first!

and Garden News....

sigh - it's lovely.

We've had a week of warm rain so there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, the weeds went crazy - I have to weed the brick walkway (frowny face). The good news is - everything else went crazy too (smiley face). I have raspberries to pick by the handfuls, tomatoes are finally turning red, herbs are exploding, shasta daisies are blooming (!), garlic scapes are ready to harvest, sunflowers are doing beautifully, melisse is growing rampant and the bees... Matt came today and said the bees are doing so well they starting making their own combs in the top part of the hive boxes!  He will come tomorrow and add more "supers". Looking forward to that honey!

Because EVERYTHING is exploding I also had a poison-something-or-other scare the other day. I went to cut melisse for some pesto and noticed a lot of weeds. I yanked them out before thinking and then couldn't understand why I was so itchy all night. I'm not sure if it is mosquitoes or poison ivy or poison sumac. None are a good thing. Mosquitoes are one thing - but the poison other stuff is not fun. The next day I went out in the wet sweltering heat in pants, long sleeve shirt, rain boots and gloves and scoured the area.  Miss Mary, from next door, caught me and asked what I was doing. Today Mr. El told me he could tell me what "poison-ivory" looked like. Great! He came over and we did find some. Nasty stuff. I also am pretty sure I yanked up some poison sumac the other day. I am treasuring these moments of learning from Mr. El. He has been diagnosed with throat cancer. He won't talk about it but Miss Mary keeps me posted. He is 75, in great shape, (good) but smokes too much (bad). He goes in on the 30th for major surgery. I am very sad about this. I am hoping for the best for him and Miss Mary. If you have room in your prayers or whatever you do - please say a little prayer for him. He is a good man.