dismantling

I am a dreamer. I dream up projects. Sometimes they become reality. Often they just stay tucked away in my brain. The jump from clearly doable in my head to actually done is, more often than not, one of those inexplicably unbridgeable gaps. The fear of my most recent pet project-in-utero ending in defeat is often enough to keep me from even attempting to move an idea into reality.

One such idea that has been kicking around in my head for months now is that of making shoes. My disenchantment with available shoes for my kids lately has made me think I ought to be able to just make them some shoes. Simple as that. Or at least it's as simple as that if it stays tucked safely away in my idea drawer.

But I have this incredibly talented friend who doesn't have as hard a time making the jump from idea to finished product. (Probably because she's not afraid to go through several incarnations before she ends up with the result she's looking for.) My friend, also fascinated by the idea of making shoes, is trying to help me not flake out on this idea. She has encouraged me to start by taking apart some shoes in order to see how they are constructed. And so I did.

These were the results of an evening of hacking away at the shoes with scissors and a butter knife. Not too pretty. But I have high hopes for what I'll learn in the process.