The Shoes
Current Styles & Rates
| $80 | Desert Boots | Calf-High Lace Up Boot | Moccassin Boot |
| $60 | Front Opening Shoe | Side Opening Shoe | Princess Shoe |
| $50 | Open-Back Slip On | Moccasins | |
| $40 | Sandals |
See Gallery for sample shoes. If I've not made a sample, you may be able to purchase that shoe type at a greatly reduced price!
About the Shoes
Honeysuckle and Thyme footwear is about your feet! Shoes, sandals, and moccasins are made from a drawing of your foot, with uppers moulded over your foot. After break in, they will fit you exactly. Because of this, your presence is required for the creation of your shoes.
All footwear is made of the leather which is a natural by-product of the cattle that become hamburgers and steaks. Shoe uppers, sole liners, and midsoles are all leather. The shoes have a nice cushy padding that packs down as you wear it and forms perfectly to your feet, giving you plenty of support. For comfort and durability, soles are most often rubber crepe. You can wear them for ages—just take them to a local cobbler for a sole-replacement when needed.
Because they are made of naturally biodegradable leather, these shoes will break-down after you have loved them thoroughly, and gladly won’t fill up landfills and be around when our grandchildren have children.
Handcrafted shoes for happy feet!
About
About Honeysuckle and Thyme
Honeysuckle and Thyme has grown out of a desire for building sustainable communities that are self-supporting as often as possible. This means it seeks to:
- Make pretty and practical things!
- Be exploitation-free
- Reduce our reliance on outside forces
- Connect us to our community, by building essential relationships between neighbours
- Keep our community economy strong, by sourcing supplies from local sellers and selling to local people. Our money stays in our community.
- Work on trade when appropriate
About the Shoemaker
Hello! I'm Azadeh. Honeysuckle and Thyme is my personal little dream. After university and several varied jobs that took me across the globe, I found what I really want is to make some of the material goods I, and my community, need. I learned knitting, spinning, weaving and dyeing, sewing and pattern making, pottery, and finally shoemaking. I love having a direct connection with the basic items of my life; part of me has gone into them!
My other, related, passion is for self-sufficient, exploitation-free communities. In our modern world, exploitation of workers, who often make barely liveable wages stitching our trousers, casting our mugs, or picking our tomatoes, and exploitation of the earth, with “disposable” plastic goods clogging our oceans and empty spaces, have become unavoidable side-effects of ever-growing economies of cheap goods. But when we know who makes our material goods and who grows our food, when we understand the chain of creation, we can cut out so much of this exploitation! We can walk in confidence knowing we are harming none!
The Plan
Phase 1. Before
I want to practice, practice, practice this lovely art of simple shoemaking! I want lots of feet: children's feet, women's feet and men's feet! I am developing the models of shoes I offer, so now, as part of a sample sale, all shoes are available for only the cost of materials!
Phase 2. Fall/Winter (Now!)
Focus on serving the Kitsilano/Vancouver community. This is a community-oriented project! I want to build relationships with the people who will walk and prance about in Honeysuckle and Thyme shoes. I know they will love and value their shoes more because of the established relationship between shoemaker and shoe-wearer. We can develop and heighten our sense of place with our connection over simple necessities like footwear!
Phase 3. Spring/Summer ‘11
Traveling Shoemaker Phase!
What is the spirit and character of Canada? To find out, I will travel across British Columbia and Canada, exploring this place I call home and fulfilling the needs of feet for great leather shoes. As traveling shoemaker, I'll move from place to place with the help of a camper van powered by fry oil, roaming freely and searching out enchantment. Making shoes, I'll meet their wearers and listen to the stories of their lives. Once they are dancing about in Honeysuckle and Thyme shoes, I'll share their stories in the A Mile in their Shoes section of this site.
A Mile in their Shoes
I really want to know whose feet will fill the shoes I make: Who are these enchanted wanderers? Where do their feet carry them? What are their stories?
Handcrafted shoes give a lovely opportunity for conversation between shoemakers and shoe-wearers; the perfect time to discover one another. Once these wanderers, are prancing in their new footwear, a photo of their shoes will grace the gallery page of this site, along with their stories.
Jim
These are Jim's moccasin slippers, a bit of coziness for feet that love rest. These feet have carried Jim through marathons, races, and forest runs, in North America, Europe, even Antarctica. After petting penguins, one needs coziness indeed!
Ash
Ash is an artist, activist, photographer, potter, and organizer for peace. He's also a war veteran and father of two dear little ones. These are his shoes, brown leather desert boots. His feet are happy.
Maria
These are Maria's boots (she also has black ones to match), boots that carry a woman of boundless energy and enthusiasm all over the city, walking dogs, selling houses, and enjoying family. Maria is an overflowingly kind woman whose wide experiences in life certainly have not gotten her down. And now she has an extra fringe in her step!
Erin
These are Erin's leafy side-openening shoes, made especially for her in-need-of-repair feet. We worked together to be sure these shoes would be comfortable over her pinched nerves and other foot issues, and the result is both cute and accommodating. Now she can wear these shoes to prance around with her young son and daughter!
Seres
These are Seres' boots. Seres is this shoemaker's name-changing friend, a wonderfully creative, insightful, caring person. Her boots reflect her creative style and her love of fresh air and the outdoors. She is a boundless woman. Her shoes carry her through the world, exploring with her children.
Nick
These are Nick's elk hide desert boots. Nick is a game programmer with an apperciation for handmade things, especially a wardrobe of simple, clean, classic clothing--so simple shoes fit him perfectly. He has a wild imagination and can dream himself into enchanted worlds or can dream games into existence. His shoes carry him downtown and on beachy or forested walks where new stories are born, then home again, to his sanctuary and his shoemaker wife.
Cate
These are Cate's shoes. (She has black moccasins also.) Cate is an oncology nurse turned English professor, with a gentle, sweet spirit. She clothes herself in creative, lovely treasure-garments so she sometimes resembles a fairy queen while she walks her four large rescued dogs. On weekends, she is an energetic singing witch in Shakespearean opera.
Melaney
These are Melaney's shoes, with Coast Salish-inspired trim. Melaney is a first nations woman who identifies strongly with her cultural heritage and is overflowing with knowledge about her people and her land in times past. Once-upon-a-time, she worked as a chef, and now helps provide household goods to those moving from street life into housing. Her shoes carry her through sorting warehouses, to training sessions, and to her huge family of adopted and biological siblings. Such a blessing she is to her city!