While at sea…

This blog has fallen to the wayside in the wake of “This Ship is Sinking”, my blog about TFA and being a first year teacher. But life happened, as it is wont to do, and I am no longer in the classroom. Instead, I have joined the ranks of job hunters, and I have been fighting boredom tooth and nail.

At first, I filled  my time with applying for jobs. Within a week, I had applied to over 60. But then it became depressing.

I struggled with what to do – I felt guilt at not pouringall of my energy into job applications, but it is a joyless task. Then I started thinking about the fact that, living in a house now, I have a large sewing/craft room.

First, I sewed a skirt.

The skirt took about an hour, if I take into consideration looking up an easy pattern online, cutting, and then sewing.

But then I still had every other day ahead of me.

Cooking, of course, was always an option, but I find very few dishes require love and care for a whole work day. So I saved cooking for late afternoons.

And then Mother’s Day was looming. I asked mom what she wanted, and she said – “I want baritone wind chimes. I have a lot of tinkly ones, but I want a deep one.”

I looked them up online that night, and my eyes flew out of their sockets at the $150 price tags (and those are the cheap ones!). It was then that the insanity came to full fruition, and I had the idea to make them.

When I brought this up with E, he politely and delicately attempted to steer me in a different direction. But after a few hours of pouting and demonstrating that I actually had an idea on how to do it, he caved (of course), and we went back out to get supplies.

Those supplies were: copper pipe (10 feet), a pipe cutter, sturdy outdoor rope, a power drill (because somehow we did not yet own one), a wooden support plate, a bag of smaller wood plates for a striker, and some other decorative items. All told, after cutting the pipes, drilling the holes, painting the wood, and giving it all a good coating of enamel, I’d say it took about 2.5 hours. And the results were great!

Just in case, I won’t post a picture yet, since Mother’s Day has not yet arrived. But they will come, rest assured.

So what did I learn? That I can totally do this crafting thing.