More Shopping Goodness

 These are the shoes I bought to bead. I think it will be fabulous--I checked, and the needle goes through the fabric easily. They're new, although they don't look it, do they? $17 on sale. No, I currently have no idea what I'm going to do to them. What I REALLY want are some of these:

Or, really, almost anything from here.
Alas.

 These are the not-new shoes, although I'm pretty sure they actually are. The gel pads in there are mine--to keep my feet from slipping because shoes are always too wide--I have a bag of these, and I add them (or Dr Scholl's inserts) to almost every pair of shoes I own.

 These are leather, they say. They're a size 11. I've never worn a size 11 in my life; I wear 9 1/2, but that means I sometimes wear a 9 and sometimes a 10. I looked at these and thought, "Those don't look that big," and tried them on. There's no way they're an 11 unless shoes have gone to vanity sizing, too. I'm guessing someone who does wear 11 ordered these, tried them on, went, "No way," and, rather than returning them, put them in the resale pile. Lucky me.

 What makes these shoes full of possibilities are these:

Know what they are? Hint: shoe clips! I ordered them last winter for some idea I had, and by the time they arrived, I'd moved on to some other project. But I can make things out of leather--leather rosettes, for example--and attach them to the shoes. Temporarily, so I can take them off and attach something else. Groovy!

 Then there's this skirt. I love gores, as I may have mentioned a time or two, and this skirt has them:

Plus it's asymmetrical, which I really like. I hate the mustardy color, but that's OK, because right this minute it--along with almost everything else I bought plus some of The EGE's stuff and some stuff that was waiting--a whole TON of stuff--is in a dyebath of golden yellow and lemon yellow. This Bryn Walker (more Bryn Walker! Swoon, although I don't know why) tunic, below, is in there, too. This thing looks huge on me. It's an extra-small. I'm not loving the neckline--that shape makes me look really scrawny; it always has. My clavicles stick out--someone once said I could hang clotheshangers on those bones--and it's just a really unflattering and, to me, uncomfortable neckline. I like something scooped lower. Not cleavage-bearing lower. Nah. Just low enough so that if I want to wear a contrasting-color tank underneath, it will show. You're smacking your forehead going, "Of course! Why show just one bright color when you can show two!"

So when this load of stuff comes out of the yellow dye, I'll check everything and decide where to go next. It's tough explaining to The EGE, who loves color but doesn't *think* about color, that just because I'm putting his shorts in the yellow dye bath doesn't mean they're going to be yellow. They *can* be yellow, but they can go on to be acid green or orange, depending on what I do next. Why do I do it this way? There's always something that needs brightening up. The tunic right above, for instance. It's a sort of salmon color. Not bad, but not as cool as a bright melon. Into the yellow dye bath. I could have a yellow dye bath for stuff I wanted to be yellow, and then an orange dye bath, and a chartreuse dye bath. But I'd be using a lot more golden yellow, and I run through a LOT of that stuff--I'm almost out. So I start everything out (well, not things that will be pink or purple, obviously) in the yellow and then go from there--some will go into a mix of chartreuse and a tiny bit of bright green. Some will go into a mix of deep orange and a tiny bit of fuchsia. Some, like the almost-bright-enough green linen jacket, will be just perfect when they come out. One pair of new white cargo shorts (his)--I don't know. They have olive khaki lining at the waist and the same color topstitching. He wants them to be some color other than green, but I think the only choices are green or gold. We'll see when I take them out. I'm trying to salvage a pair I dyed for him when I first started. They were greenish khaki, and I tried to make them orange. Oh, the pain. They are the butt-ugliest orange I have ever seen. I keep hoping that eventually I'll be able to overwhelm the residual green. I could take out all the color and start over, but no. I don't do that. Life is too short. (Plus where would be the challenge, hmmmmm?)

So that's where I'm at today. I've removed most of the lace from that macrame (thanks, Purple Puffin!) vest, and I've taken off those poufy shoulder pad-ish things. I'm going to have to replace the three insets of chamois--if I'd realized what it was, I would have known better than to wash it. Once I get the rest of the lace off, I can decide how much effort I want to put into it. If I replace the chamois, I'm going to have to cut it out and then sew the replacement onto the macrame because there's no way I'd try to unknot it and reknot the leather back in the way it is now. All I know is this: I want to know who made this, and I want to talk to them. It's an odd garment, but there's some cool work in there.