I'm a little over two months into shaving with a straight. I have to say up to this point it really has been smooth sailing for me. I consistently have been getting what I consider perfect bbs shaves, little to no irritation, very few tiny nics which most were from shaving a small pimple but definitely nothing serious. I think it's safe to say I'm pretty comfortable wielding my beauties, even shaving my fiances legs once a week.

Well tonight I got not one but two fine slices, one on each cheek. I thought I'd experiment with my stroke and tried the scythe motion which obviously was a bad idea. Initially I thought I was doing fine but at the end of my second stroke I felt a weird almost dragging sensation which quickly became apparent to be about a 1 1/2 inch slice at the bottom of my cheek. Not even the stypic pencil wanted to stop this one. After about a minute of wiping and going back over it with the pencil it finally quit. So I resumed shaving. Then like an idiot tried it once again on my other cheek, you know since the first one turned out so lovely. I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

So now I have two nice little reminders not to get to confident in my abilities and to respect just how sharp these fine instruments are. I'm just curious, for any one who has been successful using this method, where do you think I went wrong? I think that maybe I should have been lifting the blade prior to the end of the pass and I don't think I was doing this. Not that I'm in a hurry to try it again, just wondering.