Roland’s nags and nails: looking forward to Christmas

There’s just one more week to go until our Christmas break.

Luckily for me, my training farrier Kris closes down over Christmas and so we will have a really nice long break until after the New Year.

It does mean that this week coming will be tough as we try and get in front of the workload.

I have had more opportunities to fit shoes and I’m beginning to think of feet in a slightly different way.

It’s funny how this new stage of fitting shoes has altered my perception of feet even though everything I’ve been doing until now has been building up to this.

Back at the forge where I practise my shoe making, Kris has had me making shoes to the shape of the old shoes that we take away with us.

Even though I use a ruler at the moment to get my dimensions, the shape is really important and it’s possible to have a shoe that measures correctly, but still does not fit.

Seeing the shape of the foot and translating that into the shape of a shoe is really very difficult. Hopefully, over time, this will start to come but, for now, much of it is trial and error and the learning curve feels very steep once again.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Roland

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