kaberett | still not over the novelty that is Warm Feets (Reply)

Okay. So. A little while ago now I convinced myself that I was Bored of the amount of darning slipper socks seem to take, and the way they slip down, and and and, and consequently decided that the Manitobah Tipi moccasins might in fact be A Thing I Wanted. A mildly terrifyingly expensive Thing I Wanted, sure, but with the distinct advantages of being (1) Indigenous-owned and designed, (2) very clear about where their manufacture takes place and the origins of the materials they use, (3) pretty, and (4) designed for much colder weather than we get over here. Additionally and furthermore, they combined the key features of slipper socks (no rigid sole; grippiness) with those of slippers (no falling down!) with none of, from my perspective, the downsides.

So I took a deep breath and asked one of my Canadians to buy me a pair and reship them to me (on the basis that if you're outside Canada you gotta use the US site, where the prices are all the same as the Canadian site but in USD not CAD, including the $75 shipping, which would for a single pair of slippers take me over the Probably Customs Duty threshold -- which would not be the case if I got cheaper reshipping from a Canadian.

So I arranged all that! ... and then I had the NHS headache service appointment in which I discovered that I was not going to have to pay for the CGRP monoclonal antibodies out of pocket, and promptly blew half the money I'd had earmarked for the first month's worth of drugs on a pair of waterproof Tamarack.

And then they arrived, via Shenanigans With Parcelforce. I did not get charged customs, rather to my astonishment.

First impressions: significantly prettier than the photos made them look; mild irritation that the shaft was lined with faux fur, which I think is not at all clear on the website, but I got over this fairly quickly on the basis that it involves less allergen exposure for an Alex. And then I wore them around the house for a fortnight! For the first 48 hours or so they were a bit Noticeable around my toes, but that vanished fairly rapidly as they shaped themselves to my feet.

The Really Big Thing: my feet were warm. My feet were consistently, comfortably warm! I have thereby established that in order to have Comfortably Warm instead of At Best Uncomfortably Chilly feet in a room at around 20°C, I need to be wearing boots rated to -32°C and cotton socks. Which seems like massive overkill! But there you have it!

And then this weekend just gone I stress-tested them, i.e. wore them in a field in temperatures down to about 3°C and A Great Deal Of Humidity, and... my feet didn't hurt. I was wearing these boots for probably over 18 hours a day, for about four and a half days, and it wasn't until the very end that my actual feet started getting sore. At all. When my feet started getting a bit chilly around 10 p.m. -- you know, the kind of chilly that is absolutely normal and routine for me in, again, a room at 20°C with no windchill -- I took the cotton socks off, stuck my feet back in the boots, did a very small amount of trudging, and all of a sudden my feet were warm again.

This is absolutely unprecedented.

I will note that the time I spent walking without socks did give me proto-blisters on the back of both ankles, but frankly that too is astonishingly minor in terms of what my feet usually do with new shoes (or even old shoes I haven't worn in a while)!

So, er, yes, here is me thrilled and delighted.

And then I got home and my slippers had arrived and I put them on and... promptly discovered that my feet are warm in them if (1) I am walking or (2) I am wearing socks. No socks and under two layers of blanket, even starting from warm? Nope, the two square inches of skin exposed on the top of my foot makes the Raynaud's go more-or-less as soon as I stop moving. If, however, I wear socks? ... warm feet. Feet, even, that wind up uncomfortably warm when I do my Trudging to Get My Steps.

This is novel and astonishing and I, also, did I mention I am delighted? I routinely have warm feet. Cold feet that Would Not Warm Up have been e.g. disrupting my sleep since I were but a wee thing; I have for as long as I can remember been living with pronounced Beau's lines on my big toenails. I am deeply, nerdily excited to discover whether I've found what it takes to let them grow out.

In conclusion: boots superlative, slippers Pretty Damn Good, my feet are warm, and subject to Sam Vimes' Boots Theory I cannot recommend them highly enough. I am now on their mailing list, I am periodically going back to coo over everything else they sell but have not yet decided I actually want more, and I have already convinced A that he wanted a pair of his own. Those arrived shortly after we got back so have not yet been subjected to their stress-testing, but come June I will update you all on how they do for him...