The shoes are made for walking Last night I started a new project: knitted shoes.

→[More:]Dad Swan has quite a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis. His feet are somewhat deformed and he has a very hard time getting comfortable footwear. My father's options are either to spend $500 getting shoes custom made or to endure a prolonged and very painful breaking in period. He doesn’t want to do either, with the result that he usually only owns two pair of shoes and those are get to a horrible condition before he'll agree to their replacement. I knit him slippers with cushioned soles and he loves them and finds them wonderfully comfortable, but of course they’re only good for wearing around the house.

Last night on the train home I had a brainstorm. I’d previously seen a web post written by a woman who cut the uppers off a pair of converse sneakers, knitted new uppers, and then attached them to the sole. Why couldn’t I do something similar? Surely a knitted pair of sneakers would feel like slippers and just give way wherever they needed to.

So last night I went to Zellers and bought a pair of $13 runners and some special craft yarn, cut the uppers off the shoes with an x-acto knife, and started knitting pieces using the old uppers as a pattern. The challenge will be to make them look as much as possible like ordinary running shoes. Dad won’t want to wear anything that looks ridiculous. I maybe won’t be able to make anything that looks good enough to be worn in public, but I’ll be satisfied if I manage to make something Dad can wear around his workshop, since he spends a lot of time out there on his woodworking. Also I need to make the shoes with Velcro closures rather than lace up. Dad finds the Velcro a lot easier to manage because his hands are also bad.

Here’s a picture of the shoes I saw on the web.

I’m hoping I can make my version look more finished and less homemade. I also got plain black yarn rather than magenta, because that seems more like Dad’s style.;-)

I hope this works, but if it doesn't, it's not like I'm out some significant amount of money or time.