Valenki

I recently came across this photo, which I really love and which brings a lot of memories from my childhood. First things first, the white valenok is commercially made, but the little ones are hand-made by Russian feltmaker Natalia Simkina . When I saw this photo I immediately remembered my days back in Latvia when I was a kid. As you might know winters there are rough, it snows a lot and temperatures go way down below zero Celsius. So valenki is a perfect footwear for those kind of conditions. Me and my brother used to stay out for hours, lucky us we lived near the forest so we went skiing and sledging all the time. Some good memories there. Nowadays they decorate valenki with embroidery and different other techniques to give it more modern look, but that's another story.