Grandma Slippers

Not trendy, but VERY warm and give your feet a bit of an inbuilt massage as you walk in them, thanks to the ridges in the knitting.

My Grandma, now dead over 10 years, knitted these for me at least 5 years before she died. She gradually lost her sight from her mid-teens and was completely blind (bar occasional shadows) by her mid-forties. The blindness was as a result of a pan of scalding water falling off the stove, onto the back of her neck (damaging the optic nerve) as she was sitting on the settle by the stove at the time (you've got to picture a really old fashioned cooking range here).

She was an intelligent, fiercely independent woman who would have loved to teach had her sight not been damaged. She married twice and lived independently for as long as she possibly could, spending the last 15-20 years in sheltered accomodation and still having a "gentleman friend" who she went on holiday with until her mid 80's :-)

I always knew her as an "old lady" as she was a fairly late mum herself so was well into her 70's, and limited by angina and arthritis, by the time I was old enough to form really lasting memories of her. One of the things she could still do to occupy herself was knit and as the arthritis got worse, this thick nylon wool stuff was ideal as she could easily "count" the stitches along her knitting needle with her fingers and it didn't slip about too much. There are several pairs of these slippers kicking around the family and they do make me smile every time I see them, they're indestructible and will probably outlast us too!