Keeping feet warm

Ok, this product is not a real geek product, and I actually think that probably the products I will list will most likely not all be geek products, at all. This one is for pure comfort!

When I was a child, I used to get a pair of felt slippers for christmas. They kept piling up as I wasn't an eager user of them in the early years. My grandmother's relatives had a farm in Central Finland, they had sheep and apparently they sold the wool to this felt factory and got boots and slippers, or something. But that changed. I stopped getting the slippers for christmas and I started to use them. I had enought of slippers to last something like 10 years but now I had to start buying my own.

Felt slippers? What are they? They are slippers or boots made of 100% wool. They are so sympathetic! They keep my feet warm inside and the boots are absolutely the best shoes to wear in the snow! " Felt slippers and boots are made of 100% pure wool, which is the only suitable material for this kind of production. Production is based to the felting possibility of wool fibre.", says the text on the website of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, one of the few felting factories in Europe.

The factory shop of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, located in Jämsä, Central Finland, is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Ok, that is relative. It is perhaps 10 kilometres from the main road, a nice setting of red country houses by a field. An angry dog barking in the yard makes you think that can this really be a shop where they actually welcome you. But it is. And the products are just lovely.





I got felt boots for my kids last winter and another pair of slippers for myself and my husband. When I was a kid all of the slippers and boots were just wool, nothing else but they've clearly made an "advanced enhanced" model as they now come with rubber soles, too. Great for taking the trip to the postbox or if you have slippery stairs. But I still prefer my original models, plain wool.

This lovely factory shop sells other things, too. I bought a pile of coasters which are made of felted wool cut into nice shapes: hearts, flowers, ginger breads... I put a pile of these onto the coffee table and regularly use one of them under my tea cup when watching TV in the winter. I also bought a bag of bits and pieces, felted wood for kids to be creative with. It cost next to nothing.

The felted boots and felted slippers that were really common when I was a kid have now become somewhat of a luxury item. Pretty retro, I think! (and it makes me feel so old...).