Perhaps it began with The Elves and the Shoemaker (still one of my two favourite fairytales).
I’m no Imelda Marcos but when I was a child I did long for a pair of pointy red shoes. (I couldn’t believe my fortune when my cousin gave me her outgrown ones – the very pair that had seeded the yearning.)
When I was a teenager I made my own knee-high ugg boots. Mum sometimes tanned skins from our sheep and I snaffled a brown one of those. I bought leather thonging and spent evenings sewing by the fire. The boots were utilitarian rather than decorative and terrifically snugly. It didn’t bother me that they were not as tidy as other people’s store-bought ones.
There’s something very pleasing about meeting one’s own needs. Continue reading