Long time no update!! I've been quite busy with life in general, as well as with fun things like Midwestria! Hopefully I'll have the few photos I snapped from that edited and uploaded soon, but in the meantime, I will just say that I had a fantastic time and was extremely pleased at how friendly and laid-back the entire convention was. I loved it, and I really hope I can make it again next year!
With the increasing amount of dancing I've been doing, my pointe shoes were well and dead. In fact, Maan and I took about a week-long break from our privates because the new pointe shoes I had ordered just weren't arriving. And then Chicago Dance Supply had their October Wednesdays sale and I thought hey, what better than 50% off pointe shoes??!! As it turns out, they didn't actually have the exact specifications I had originally wanted, but I tried on a few slight variations in width/shank and now have three different versions of the Grishko 2007 pointe shoe to try out.
My original pair was a size 3 XXXX width with a medium shank. Once broken in, these were far more comfortable and easier to dance in than the Bloch Serenades I had been wearing previously. The only slightly complaint was that the box sometimes felt too wide, and my foot would slide forward if I was having a slightly skinnier-foot-day. That's how I got my bruised toenail, which was a wonderful adventure. I now use gel caps on my big toes, and have a permanently glued-in piece of gel padding above the big toe area of my left shoe to make it the same length as the second toe on that foot (my two feet are different shapes, yes...). I tried sticking the Gaynor Minden box liner in there, but that made it too small, so I gave up on that and just padded my big toes.
The current new pair is still a size 3 XXXX width, but now with a soft shank. Obviously these are breaking in much faster than the previous pair, and I have a feeling I'll wear these out in half the time if not sooner. Even on the second wearing, my feet already feel like they did in the previous pair after a few months... so... I have the same complaint with these in that the first time my feet kept slipping forward the tiniest bit in the box, but the Gaynor Minden liners made them too too tight. I'll be interested to see if the narrower pair I got for half-price fits any better (or if I can even get my foot in them at all if I'm having a fat-foot-day...).
The comparison sequence for now has me concluding that if I really need to break in some shoes pronto, soft shanks are fine, but I do still prefer the feel of a medium shank. Another possibility is that I could use a soft shank on my left foot and a medium shank on my right foot, as they have differing extremes in tendencies to go not-far-enough or too-far over the box.
No comments:
Post a Comment