If you noticed that this pair of boots disappeared from my social media pages for a while, you weren’t imagining things.

I made the boot tops and all was well, but then I added a gray calf foot and they turned on me. Nothing went right after that. The color of gray didn’t make me happy, they fought me for hours before I got them lasted, I used a tool I don’t normally use during lasting because I was filming a video demonstration comparing tools and the new one scratched the finish a tiny bit, when I stitched the soles one boot looked terrible, and a little screw on the Curved Needle that’s never caused any problems before gauged out a huge chunk of finish on the side of one boot.

I had planned to finish them before I had to leave the shop for two weeks at the end of June, but I was despondent and just left them so I could enjoy my time away. When I returned, I looked at them and realized what I had to do. I took a sharp knife and SLICED THE FOOT OFF THE LAST. It was painful, but sometimes you have to commit to doing something that keeps you from rethinking the decision. Once I made that first slice I couldn’t change my mind. Then I took the boots home and spent all evening on the couch picking stitches to completely remove the old vamp from the boot tops.

I chose another piece of gray leather — kangaroo this time — crimped it, made a new red wingtip, and sewed it on the vamps. At this point I was nervous because sometimes when you tear something apart and put it back together, it’s obvious it’s been torn apart and put back together. But I guess these boots had only been fighting me because they didn’t like that gray calf either. I sewed the new gray kangaroo foot back on and restitched the side seams by hand, and it could not have gone better. Then I put them on the last again, and they lasted like a dream. Instead of hours of fighting, I had them both on the last, with the heels wiped in, in thirty minutes.

Now I am finally back where I started, with the soles on and stitched. The stormy cloud that hovered over these boots seems to have disappeared and now they’re happy. I like this gray foot better too. It’s basically the same depth of gray but the first one had yellow undertones and this one has blue undertones and it looks nicer. Plus, while I was in Nashville I had the unexpected opportunity to see one of the original boots made by Dixon in this design and I got a better look at the butterfly on the heel. I’d never seen a full picture of the heel so I had to guess at it, and I hadn’t gotten it quite right. This version has an accurate reproduction of the countertip (heel decoration).

It’s always so hard to know when to call it and start over. Will I be able to fix it or will trying to fix it make everything worse? It’s a decision I like to ponder for a while and give my intuition time to speak. In this case, I realized I could not be happy proceeding with the boots as they were and it was a relief to start again.