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The Flatland Chronicles for Thursday, July 27 [part two]
Special postings for today.
- FLORIDIANA GLORIANA! Some photographs of brightly colored plant life, found both along the roadside (Highway 19), in small towns (Melrose, Florida), and beside the Atlantic (I think in St. Augustine Beach, but am not sure). Pretty colors; aspects of Florida that tourists either don't see or don't notice especially when they do. In the Floridiana Gloriana blog, here. Never say I'm not patriotic; my love for beautiful, maligned, misunderstood Florida knows no bounds. If that's not love of one's country, I don't know what it?
RELATED LINKS FOR NORTH FLORIDA EAST COAST BEACH PHOTOGRAPH
Flagler Beach---Beachflower
Flagler Beach---Morning Beside the Pier
East C0ast Beach Afternoon Beside the Pier (Flagler or Crescent Beach)
TO JUMP TO THE UPDATED VERSION OF THE POSTING THAT FOLLOWS, PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK!
JOURNAL. Other people's pastimes: grocery bag sandals?
One of the many aspects of the net that I could never have predicted back in the early days of the "personal computer" are the glimpses it provides into the ways that other people use their time differently from me. It's eye-opening and often humbling. Before the net, I certainly knew that many people lived very different lives from me and mine, but before the net I didn't have the actual evidence.
I have the greatest respect for people who work with their hands. Science shows that the coordination of mind and hand is enormously freeing. It shuts down the talky left brain and opens up the channels to the creative flow. When friends are in trouble, one piece of advice I usually try to offer is "Make something." It sounds stupid, but it is extremely soothing.
During one of the worst periods of my life, a friend sent me some Dover coloring books and a set of coloring pencils. Dover press produces awesome coloring books: celtic designs, drawings of famous women, medieaval woodcuts, Tiffany glass, Japanese prints (my personal fave). It sounds childish, but when you're drowning in stress, coloring is better than lying curled up in a fetal position. Each picture I colored was a vacation from grim reality. Furthermore, each picture I colored in indicated that I was a few minutes closer to being past the worst of it----and I had something to show for it (which is way better than having nothing to show for it). I truly think we need much more emphasis in our schools on the visual arts and on various crafts.
But though I respect and envy artists and artisans, I really have very little insight into how they get their inspiration. How wonderful it must be to be able to say, "Hmmm, look at that. I think I'll make something with that."
But I suppose there is an argument that such innovations can be taken too far.
Back in June, Manolo the Shoeblogger, the only styleconsultant anyone a girl really needs, posted a note regarding one woman's unusual craft project: sandals crocheted from plastic grocery bags ("Garbage for the Feets!"). I enjoyed it. I was not aghast at the thought of lumpy crocheted sandals---I live in a land amply supplied with wearers of Crocs and Birkenstocks and things made from crochet and macrame---though must admit that I've never seen the craftiest of our craft-work wearers wearing anything made from grocery bags.
Manolo's objections are aesthetic and based on his innate sense of fitness:
[quote from Shoeblogs begins]
These they are the sort of thing that would be worn the ranting homeless lady who lives in the culvert behind the Ralph’s Super Saver. You know, the one who wears the dirty grey poncho and shouts at you as you leave your car, “Whore of Babylon! You’ll burn in the sulphurous pits of Hell!”
That one.
This is the sort of person who would put such things upon her feets.
Do not be this person, do not wear such things upon your feets.
[quote from Shoeblogs ends]
Mine are kinesthetic and visceral: plastic grocery bags? On your feet? Consider the texture of a garbage bag, which is both slippery and crinkly. Crocheted into macrame-like lumps, they would be squashy and yet nonresilient, offering no support whatsoever for my abnormally high arches. As you walk, they would---or so I imagine---make a horrifying shsh shsh shsh sound, like the sound of a hand sliding across paper (a sound which affects me in the same way as fingernails across a chalkboard).
At the time I read the posting, I laughed, but didn't actually look at the link the Manolo provided to the actual site where these plastic shoes are featured. Today, having temporarily exhausted the supply of unread Manolo-generated goodies, I went to the site (Craftster.Org) to have a look.
They don't look any worse---or any better---at first blush than your average macramed-by-hand product, at least when the maker, or "craftster," MLeak, actually put them on her feet. Somehow or other she managed to find grocery bags in a rather fetching shade of pale aubergine. And I have to give her some Connecticut-Yankee-style innovation points for coming up with the idea---plus I think more students should be encouraged to make clothes out of grocery bags and tin cans and things, instead of relying on credit cards (theirs or their parents', but especially theirs).
So my aversion to the thought of grocery-store-bag sandals is not unmixed with admiration.
The date on the posting (April 1) gave me pause; you'd think the whole thing as an elaborate April's Fool ploy, except...there they are. On her feet. Apparently, she had originally planned to fashion a handy tote from her grocery bags, but didn't have enough pale aubergine bags to carry through. If you look at her link, you will see that the completed tote bag really is rather beautiful, at least---or rather especially--- for a tote bag made entirely of grocery bags.
Anyway, here's her explanation of how she came to be crocheting sandals from grocery bags.
[quote from posting by MLeak at Craftster.Org begins:]
I started two different totes. Unfortunately, I ran out of the colors I wanted to use, and unwilling to wait for grocery day to get some more, I decided to do something small in one of the other colors I had. Since today was one of the first warm, *beautiful* days of the year, I figured I needed some sandals, so I whipped these up.... just improvised the pattern, but I think they came out all right! I have *no* idea how useful they will actually be as shoes (or more like sandal-slippers, really) but I'll see how they hold up outside. They seem fairly sturdy, though I'm really wondering if they'll melt on hot pavement. Guess I'll find out!
[quote from posting by MLeak at Crafster.Org ends]
There is a certain marvelous insouciance in all of this: a twenty-something, the age at which most girls think much too much about their clothes, chirpily and industriously eking out her wardrobe by fashioning a pair of shoes out of the stuff of which landfills are made. I can't help loving this unknown young woman for her can-do attitude and her willingness to try to spin gold out of straw.
I guess I just think that there is something dangerously destabilizing out of going down this road, which is why I end up agreeing with the Manolo. As always, he touches the matter with a needle (and skewers it to riotous effect); but putting aside the question of the ugliness of such "feetwear," I can't help thinking that a young woman who allows herself to wear shoes fashioned from grocery bags is soon going to find it to be one hell of a slippery slope because, seriously: what's next?
Making a virtue of necessity is one thing, but if carried too far, success in this sort of endeavor is sooner or later going to lead to tinfoil headgear and dresses made from newspaper. After all, why not? If it turns out that you can make clothing out of ordinary household goods, and if you like the artsy-craftsy sort of clothing, why not "recycle" your leftover bags and used wrapping paper by making them into a whole line of clothing? And if you're asking, "Why is she saying that like it would be a bad thing?", we're probably done here.
The other craftsters were fairly complimentary---as much about the innovation as the end product, I thought, though at least one asked for a "tute", which the MLeak, the inventor, obligingly provided (so if you want to whip up some crocheted grocery bag sandals of your very own, just go to the link above and you'll be set.)
One poster didn't like the way the grocery bag sandals looked and said so, though charmingly.
[quote from posting by Jelly at Craftster.Org begins]
Those are so cool
Well the concept of them and the fact that you made them
The actual shoes, they look good on you, but I personally cant stand that style - it reminds me of sandals we had to wear for school, and also of hairy european backpackers who wear them with socks. HAHA
[quote from posting by Jelly at Craftster.Org ends]
They do look like that sort of footwear, but I can't see a European backpacker, however hairy, wearing grocery bag sandals, can you?---whether with or without the thick white socks. But if you look at what the sandals look like on, you'll see why this poster was thinking along those lines. They really do have a "crunchy macrame" look from a distance. But even if you don't mind the lumpy, scratchy feel of macrame, wouldn't you draw the line at putting grocery bags on your feet?
Here's an update from MLeak, the maker:
[quote from Craftster.Org begins]
They're pretty comfortable, though they do have a sort of strange texture. I guess it's sort of like those weird "massaging" sandals you see sometimes? If the straps slip around at all they can be a little scratchy, but not too bad. The only problem is that they might get a bit sticky if your feet sweat! In terms of slipping, they're just fine on carpet. They're pretty good on wood floors, even. It's possible that as I wear them more, and they get flattened out, they'll become more slippery, but I don't know. They might actually get more comfortable too.
[quote from Craftster.Org ends]
A fellow craftster complimented MLeak on the 'recycling" aspect of making shoes from grocery bags. I do have some questions about how that would work, because it's not as if shoes made from grocery bags are going to last. Sooner or later---my guess is sooner rather than later----they will become dirty and sweaty and have to be thrown out. When that time comes, I'm assuming you wouldn't want to return them to the grocery store for recycling the way I return my bags after I've used them. You'd have to put them in with the old bottles and stuff, I guess. So grocery bag shoes aren't really a very practical form of recycling, it seems to me. At best, you prolong the inevitable.
A part of me just instinctively resists the idea of grocery bags as material for clothing. I'm not sure why that is. On Project Runway, my beloved Project Runway, the very first challenge ever required the contestants had to use materials from a grocery store to make their an outfit. The inimitable Austen Scarlett made a charming cocktail dress out of cornhusks; Jay McCarroll, the eventual winner, made a lovely ruffled mini-skirt from aluminum foil; others used paper grocery bags, ribbons, and the plastic webbing from an aluminum beach chair. Last season, the contestants had to make clothes out of materials from a plant store. This season, people had to use their apartment furnishings, including sofa cushions, beaded curtains, bathroom rugs, and anything else they could find; Michael Knight, an early favorite of mine, made a charming scallopy cocktail dress out of nothing but coffee filters.
The grocery bag sandals were different from your basic Project Runway project, in that the person who constructed them was---as she candidly said---a beginner at crocheting (though I'm predicting a brilliant future for her in that line) and "winged" it through the design stage. They really did look homemade, as opposed to runway ready, though as I said, they didn't really look worse than other homemade stuff I've seen out there.
I am trying to keep an open mind these sandals in case they become a trend, though I would never personally wear crocheted grocery bags or crochet in any form. There's a part of me that's grateful for the news that conversions from plastic bag to footwear are possible, given our ever increasing reasons to fear that we might end up living in a post-apocolyptic wildrness, freezing or burning up, and raiding landfills for our basic necessities. In that world, I might be very glad to have instructions for crocheting my very own pair of faux-macrame sandals.
On the other hand, I can't help wondering if the whole thing wasn't a truly diabolical April 1 joke on the entire community of craftsters by creating an article of wearing apparel that is fundamentally nonsensical. Could that be it? Was this craftster actually a prankster who was laughing in her sleeve while providing the instructions ("tute"), envisioning all the good and blameless artisans who frequent the site running around in shoes made from plastic bags?
I trust not; and indeed her follow up note earnestly addresses the questions submitted to her concerning construction, wearability, etc. And on that note, I offer my heartfelt thanks to MLeak for providing me with instructions I hope I will never need to use for making shoes from petroleum-based plastics and to the Manolo for directing me to the site. May it never come in useful for either the Manolo or me!
RELATED POSTINGS:
Diverse Delights: Manolo the Shoeblogger
Grocery Bag Shoes and A Plague of Butterflies: Signs of the Apocalypse?
Season of Mould & Cat 3 Hurricanes.
Mr. Rumcove Issues a Correction; also-- No Angels for Me!
Apartment Dwelling for a Happier Life
Animation © 2006 Jupiterimages Corporation; used under license!
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