Too Legit to Quit

So I have this toenail. And it gives me guff when I forget to trim it really short, but it's usually no problem in regular shoes. It's only when it's squeezed up in ballet slippers that I remember "oh yeah, I should cut that nail". Sometimes I cut it shorter than usual, and then it gives me even MORE guff, and feels like an ingrown toenail just waiting to happen. So I always knew this was going to be a problem when I started pointe. There was never any question of that. I was trying to trim it in various ways, hoping that I would find the right solution and not end up with something nasty and ingrown.
And then yesterday it broke off.
Well. I guess that is one way to solve the problem...
This makes me a super legit ballerina now, right?

PS: it didn't break all the way off, just the end bit. It didn't hurt, and I taped it up for class tonight, which was fine. I certainly won't be wearing any open-toe shoes any time soon. Not that I do, anyway. Blech.

The Shoes Heard Round The World. Or Something.

Many years ago...
I took a belly dancing class once a week, along with my mom and sister and a family friend. It was probably terribly good for us. Anyway...
As I was practicing turns in the living room one day I caught my toe on the carpet, thereby folding it under my foot. And quicker than you could blink I stepped on it, breaking my toe. It was pretty dreadful. This risky barefoot tradition (with the attendant way your feet get all grubby on the floor during class) remained in my mind as the peril of belly dancing.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I had recently quit my retail job and I was stoked to start expanding my online store. I had been tossing around the idea of dying shoes for a while so I was on the prowl for cotton canvas shoe blanks that could be experimented with. I remembered my previous experiences with belly dancing class and decided that some canvas ballet slippers would probably be the perfect medium, with the added bonus of having an obvious market. Breaking toes is just so outré.
So I went online and bought some canvas slippers from Discount Dance Supply...
Which reminded me of all the pretty ballet shoes there are in the world...
Which reminded me of how much I wanted to dance again...
And the rest is history.

PS: I did dye those slippers! But then I discovered that the dye makes the leather soles go all crunchy and cardboardy... and I really hate lumpy soles anyway, so...
Yeah, I never actually put any of them in my shop.
But here they are, anyway, the shoes that started this whole crazy thing:

FLASHY.