A Stylish, Ecological and Healthy Shoe That Your Feet Will Love!
Our handmade, felted, wool shoes are an ecological, feel-good and wonderful alternative to the ordinary shoes we normally wear. Our shoes are fashionable, yet made of a sustainable resource, Merino wool. Wool shoes, when worn against the skin, wicks away moisture –keeps moisture away from your delicate skin– and helps to regulate your body temperature, keeping your feet dry and warm. Who wouldn’t love that? Another wonderful fact is the lanolin that Merino wool contains. Lanolin is a natural, antibacterial substance. Pair all of those healthful benefits with fine, soft, felted, wool and they’ll not only have your feet looking good, but your feet will feel good too! Healthy, happy feet are very important since we rely on them to take us from place to place every day.
You will love our handmade, felted, Merino wool shoes and you can feel good about your ecological decision. What a wonderful feeling it is to support a product that is not only handmade but is also natural and sustainable. It is extremely important that we take our part in improving the well-being of our fragile planet. Instead of using machinery and equipment that require the use of excessive energy and fuel, we choose to produce our line of ecological shoes by hand. Instead of using materials that are manmade and harmful to our environment, we have chosen the luxuriously soft and earth-friendly, Merino wool. It requires more of our time, but it is much kinder to our planet. When you’re wearing our shoes, you can feel good about knowing they were made with dedication and respect for our planet, Earth. Our shoes make wonderful gifts for your friends and family. They’ll be happy to know they’re helping to take part in promoting a healthier, safer and happier environment for us all. Take your part in helping our planet while looking stylish and feeling good.
We have different styles for your everyday fashion needs. We have slippers for you to wear in the comfort of your own home. Shoes to wear, in the work like flats, for a party dress, street walk, vacation and in other ways you like. Sneakers to wear for your everyday pleasure.

Why not choose a shoe that is comfortable, ecological, promotes foot health and is fashionable? Express your style and try them for yourself!

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Handmade products have become a real trend. If two years ago no one did know much about what this meant, we now have thousands of artisans scattered everywhere. Handmade trend include a wide range of products, creations.
How does it look the handmade client? Well, most of the time: female, less than 35 years old, educated, fed up with shopping malls and looking for more than a brand, ambitious to wear something more than the other women on the street. Take a look around you! What can you see? You wear knitted clothes, hand painted wooden jewelry, decorations and ornaments manually painted and carved etc., everything around us is handmade and the interesting fact is that handmade is an old art…our grand-grandparents were manually creating their clothes, decorations, all the stuffs and this old art is ultra-modern nowadays.
For the most part ,everyone can create their own handmade clothes, can transform an old dress, can apply some buttons or some patches and can turn it into something downright amazing, but what about handmade shoes? Not everyone can create handmade shoes. Of course we can apply some colored leather bows, or some buttons on a pair of boring shoes or sandals but we cannot fully create a pair of handmade shoes, from the heels to the leather. That is why there are specialists in this handmade field.
Handmade is the trend that cannot be affected by the time and the passing years!
Handmade wool shoes tells its own story, has a life and becomes valuable … This is the handmade effect.
Handmade, felted wool shoes are a natural, eco-friendly type of shoe, amazingly soft and comfortable while being ecological. They are eco-friendly because they use the best wool in the world, which is from Australian merino sheep. This is a natural regenerating source of material. The sheep appreciate it, also, because a full coat of wool makes the sheep uncomfortably hot. The wool naturally falls out but sometimes not fast enough for the sheep. The excessive wool sheered away from the merino sheep helps to create a more comfortable wool coat ant a healthy benefit for them. As a result, these felted shoes not only help avoid creating excessive pollution but they are healthy contribute to the happiness of animals.
Wearing handmade felted shoes helps avoid contributing to the pollution caused from burning oil. The material from these shoes, come from a naturally regenerating material source. Not only does using wool as a source of material help avoid pollution but it also benefits the sheep.
Each shoe is made depending on size. Each is handmade by fine craftsman to and inspected carefully to avoid any tears or rips in the felt fabric. Only the finest quality felted shoe is available using the handmade process. The shoes are formed by using human hand pressure along with soap and water, no chemicals, and a temporary template which is removed later. Dried under the sun, subsequent layers of wool are then added for thickness and decoration.
These techniques have been passed down through many generations of European people, and it surprisingly can take as much as three hours to create one pair of footwear. There are small villages where women have found wealth making these shoes for export due to the explosive demand for this product.
Fashion is created with these lightweight handmade felted wool shoes. Due to the insulation properties, they are wonderfully warm when the weather is cold and cool when the weather is hot. The fibers give a micro massage which allows skin to breathe, they help regulate body temperature and improve blood circulation. Wool also is antibacterial. The natural rubber sole adds to durability and provides a soft walk.
Unusual in design, this beautiful footwear is becoming popular in the new American market as well as throughout the world. With slip on styling, a slim flat sole, a low soft heel, and floral corsage or silk and other trims on the toes, these unique shoes are very appealing. Hand washing in cold water is the only cleaning method that is required.

The last processes you undertake when ordering your handmade felted shoes is deciding what color and style you want.

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wool shoes

Wet felting is a process used to make wool and other animal fibers into the dense fabric known as felt, using just hot water and soap – one of the most sustainable processes in textile.
There is no spinning, knitting, crocheting or weaving involved.

The process uses heat, agitation, and moisture to shrink and bond the fibers of the wool together.
Wet felting process involves making layers of animal fleeces that have not yet been spun into yarn or thread. Natural wool fibre is stimulated by friction and lubricated by moisture (usually soapy water), and the fibres move at a 90 degree angle towards the friction source and then away again, in effect making little “tacking” stitches. Usually, as few as two and as many as six thin layers of fleece are used. Only 5% of the fibres are active at any one moment, but the process is continual, and so different ‘sets’ of fibres become activated and then deactivated in the continual process.
Only certain types of fiber can be felted successfully. Most types of animal fleece, such as those taken from the alpaca or the merino sheep, can be put through the wet felting process. This is because these types of fiber are covered in tiny scales, similar to the scales found on a strand of human hair. Wetting and soaping the fleece causes the scales to open, while agitating them causes them to latch onto each other, thus creating felt. Plant fibers and synthetic fibers will not felt, and neither will types of wool that are labeled as “super wash,” as this type of woolen fiber has been chemically treated and lacks the outer coating of microscopic scales.
Often, wet felting is done by hand, using a screen to keep the layers of fleece together while soapy water is applied with a sponge. The process works best when the water used is hot and the soap used is a mild soap rather than a harsher detergent. Sponging the fibers creates slight agitation that encourages them to stick together. If too much water is used, the lightweight fibers will not stick together but will float away from each other instead.
After the wet felting process is complete, the felted project is finished by fulling, or agitating the fibers on a rough surface such as a washboard. This process removes any air bubbles that might have been trapped between the fibers while felting, and makes the felted fabric stronger and tighter. Felt that has not been properly fulled can shed and fall apart over time. After fulling, the felted fabric may be rinsed with cool water to remove any remaining soap and then left to air dry.
The felted fabric can then be used to make accessories or garments.
Most felted fabric is made using a single color of fleece, but two or more colors can be used as well to create interesting blends of color.

They are very surprised by what they saw. The whole fair was full of wool felt
products. Buyers and sellers were dressed with wool felted shoes and clothes.
And around was possible to buy everything from wool felt, shoes and hats,
children’s toys, and housing decoration.

Instantly was decided to introduce the eco friendly wool felt products to all over the
world. It
was decided temporarily stay with the footwear manufacturing. It was also
decided to produce not only felted slippers, but women’s felted shoes as well as
sneakers and winter boots.

Eventually they tried find something similar in an American market. They were disappointed;
anything similar does not exist there.
Wanting to share the heavenly warmth of wool felted shoes with the rest of the United
States; they decided to start a small business in US. In 2011, working out of
their small cottage (without plumbing) in the woods, they made their first pair
of wool felted shoes. They named the company “kivikis” after the town in
Finland, where the idea was found.

Almost immediately, orders began rolling in. Their bedroom became the office with two
typewriters on a handmade desk. The loft was the shipping room and Karl’s
weaving studio was transformed into the warehouse.

Karl and Inga began Kivikis with blind faith in a quality product and hearts full of
good intentions. On the same spot, with the same view of the mountains and the
same reverence for the luxury of natural sheep wool, we continue to keep their
dream alive.