Look, I know what the problem is and I'm going to say it out loud so I stop being thick about it.

I'm on a heron, standing in the shallows, and the whole thing hangs on the neck. That S-curve is the print. Everything else is furniture. And I've cut the neck about 2mm too thick at the shoulder join, so instead of that coiled tension it looks like a goose that's had a feed of pints. I've proofed it four times now on the same sheet of Japanese paper, telling myself each time it's just the inking, the pressure, the paper's a bit damp, I'll pull it again when I'm fresh.

It's not the inking. The block is wrong.

The annoying bit is the fix means cutting a new keyblock from scratch. There's no adding wood back. I could scrape a sliver off the shoulder line and see if I can slim it down, but then the wing feathering above it has nothing to sit into and it'll look like a heron wearing a scarf. So it's start again, and I've two weeks to the market in Spiddal.

Any of ye ever try cutting the thing you're avoiding on a scrap block first, just to prove to yourself it's the right cut? I've a mind to do it but I suspect I'm only delaying the inevitable and I know it.