The war with the pointe shoes and dancer's weapons

Today was sow and break in the new shoes day. As my pointe shoe hammer happens to be kinda roricredible I though I'd make a really random post about it. (Because even I am tired of only seeing my stupid face around here.)

the bigger Rose flower faery bow is my sewing kit and the smaller one contains raisin. (Used to make them less slippery.) No the special hard boxes are not wood, I hate that urban legend with a passion. The tip of the shoe is a rigid box made of densely packed layers of fabric, cardboard and/or paper hardened by glue. Yes you have to sew the ribbons and supposting elastics yourself. Sometimes it's even good to remove the slippery satin from the point and sew around it. Then the real war begins. Yes, I hammer them, bend them, bang them, step and  stand on them, do a funny run and jump around on demipointe to break them in. Sometimes even jam them between the door. Now the funny I do when they get too soft is put shellac on them or put them in the frigerator. They aren't that long lasting. One is lucky to get about 10 hours of dancing from one pair.

Then to the popular among dancers meme: What's in your dancebag?  Here are Elfie's the contents for todays class and repertoire.

 On the towel which is also a content, The bag, keys and wallet, small sweat towel, toetape, deodorant,water bottle, all squished protein bars, small shower gel,the too soft pointe shoes (too old),  pen, scissors, cellphone, sunglasses, muffin earplugs, lipbalm, Massage ball/ stress toy, footsie roller (also for massage), more toetape, bus ticket, compeed, rosin box, soft ballet shoes,wooly socks, navy leotard, tights, the too hard pointe shoes (too new), ouch pouches (used to protect toes in pointeshoes), the green theraband. (rubberband used for strenghtening), T-shirt, tights, scarf I use for warm up for my achy lower back, pink sweat pants, stripy wooly warm up shortssewing kit (needle and thread), the red/ black deuserband a rubberband I use for stretching, and a book to read on the bus. I'm sure I've forgotten something.

Close up of the random small stuff:

And I'm off to class with all of this weighing heavily on my back now.