I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I went shopping for slippers.

Nearly nine years ago, Rudi visited Austria and Germany with his mom to see family friends and visit the town in which she spent her adolescence. One of those friends owns a lederhosen shop that also sells other clothing, including woolen slippers. Rudi and his mom each came home with a pair of felt clogs. Rudi wore them a bit, but they were warm and eventually I appropriated them. And wore them into the ground. Quite literally.

The holes in the toes appeared first, but you can ignore those. Then the holes in the heels, but, again, as long as you don’t step in liquid, mostly not a huge deal. Last winter the top of the slippers started to separate from the soles, and I started hunting for a replacement, but let’s be honest: what you find at the end of the winter at TJ Maxx is going to pale in comparison with handmade woolen slippers from the Alps.

This week, though, the thread that holds the edging around the top of the foot hole started to unravel, and I knew our time together was up. Pale or not, new slippers must be acquired.

Luckily, immediately after Christmas is an excellent time to shop for slippers at TJ Maxx, because slippers are a pretty common gift, so they bump up their supply and then immediately after the holidays discount much of what remains to get rid of it, probably to make way for bathing suits.

Anyway, I came home with two pairs that will work, each of which was marked down to $8.

Right now this blue pair is definitely my favorite of the two. They won’t last me ten years, but that’s probably okay. I had forgotten how warm it is to wear slippers without holes in them.

These red scuffs are a little smaller, but I won’t need to wear them out and about and they will get less poofy as I wear them, so I expect they’ll work just fine. However, I’ve kept them in the bag with the receipt so if I decide I don’t need two pairs I can take them back.