Something else I struggled with was using the thicker needle for the embroidery floss. Perhaps I need to start utilizing my thimble, which I haven't learned how to do yet.

These little letters took a surprising amount of time. With each one, I would have to rethread the needle and tie a knot, which added time to the task. For the next attempt (the word "chain"--posted below), I threaded one really long thread. Instead of having to go through the process of rethreading the needle each time, with a long thread I didn't have to do that. I only had to reknot the end. Therefore, "chain" took considerably less time, even though the word had smaller lettering.

I learned a couple important things with this stitch:

1. Similar to last time, on my first attempt I underestimated how much thread I would need--and you need quite a bit for the fishbone. As you can see on the first leaf, I ran out of thread before I could complete it. I had plenty of thread for the next leaves.

2. With both this stitch and the chain stitch, it was much more efficient and effective to not turn the hoop over to see where the needle would need to thread back in. Instead, I practiced seeing where the needle would come back through to the front by not turning the hoop over. I had to rely more on feel. If I didn't do this, it would have taken way longer (and the fishbone already took me awhile as is). As you can see, on the second-fourth attempts, my new strategy seemed to work really well, but for some reason wasn't as neat looking on the fifth attempt.

Overall, today was a day of some high highs and low lows!

I also can't believe that I can do a whipped back stitch without batting an eye now. Like, it's been weeks since I've done that stitch and it came back so easily. I didn't even have to review it or anything. After today, I can officially say I feel proud of myself.

If anything, today underscored the importance of practice over perfection! And also, like last time, today is one of those days where I can see a clear progression of my skills over the course of the semester. The french knot was nearly impossible for me at the beginning of this project when I was sewing buttons. (You have no idea how many videos I watched then and how much I practiced but to no avail!) However, after learning a bunch of different techniques and simply practicing a whole lot (and gaining patience along the way), eventually the french knot became something I'm kind of good at and had no trouble with! Practice doesn't make perfect necessarily, but it does lead to progress.

I feel like this example captures how much I've grown over the course of this project. Without having some skill and knowledge--which I've developed over the last few months--I'm not sure I would have been able to figure out a better/new way forward or even have had the confidence to experiment with this new way forward. That said, I can now see how crucial competence, practice, confidence, and risk-taking are in developing creative skills! This greatly inspires me as a teacher, and will make me think more critically about how I'm intentionally scaffolding learning and giving students time/space to experiment during this learning.