Thank you for bringing this to my attention, the Short Sword is indeed bugged, I must have missed changing it's "weapon type" when I did an overhaul. It will also be fixed in the next release!
Sandals are actually Armour, and so far the only armour that can be gifted are dresses. I left the [Gift] tag on them to indicate that they need to be gifted to Saffron as part of a quest, I may remove this tag though as it is a bit confusing. They don't show up under the actual Gifts in Items though as they can't actually be gifted in conventional sense.
I'll probably add the starter recipes in the next update or in the update after the next!