March Projects

Winter has apparently arrived.  We had a couple of mild days but overall it's been chilly.  We had snow the other day and a blizzard's on the way.  Ugh.   I'm still chipping away at a new cross stitch that is very tedius, and I needed a craft that I could do in order to get fast results.  Decided to try the Alum Crystal Candles .  I got the alum off of Amazon, not the food kind but a more 'industrial' kind cause I read that they formed better crystals.  Everything came together pretty quickly and then I just had to wait overnight till it was done.

I used a can lid for my project.  It was supposed to be able to be used as a tea light holder.

It came out pretty but the crystals are really crumbly.  More than borax.

I was kind of underwhelmed with the results.  It needs way more crystals grown inside the lid.  

Crystals grew on the bottom which I didn't expect and it's very uneven.

The paper towel on which it was drained looked pretty.

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it....the blue crystals are so pretty and sparkly so it's hard to part with it.

I'm making really great progress on the zenbroidery!

This is so much fun!  If you embroider, I highly recommend getting one of their patterns.  Even if you don't, it comes with an instruction sheet of different stitches.

Variegated floss is the best.

I'll be adding beads and sequins at the end, although it's tempting to do them now, but I am afraid they'd break if they get crushed by the hoop.

Junior High Shop Classes

My craft room is crammed full of all my most favourite treasures and tchotchkes, which are fun to look at and reminisce.  I was sitting at my craft table the other day and I spied the metal & enameled mushroom I made in the 7th grade.  

I think a lot of schools have been forced to do away with shop classes due to money, but in the 70s when the brand new Sandwich High School opened in the fall of 1976, school districts were flush with money and kids could take shop classes.

When I entered 7th grade that fall, my course schedules put me in 4 different shop-type classes in each quarter till the spring.  I had Home Ec which I hated, Art which I sucked at, Wood Shop and Metal Shop.  I don't have anything left that I made in wood shop, but we were taught how to use all the tools like bansaws and so forth.  We wore goggles and took safety very seriously.  I never remember the teachers having to yell at anyone for dangerous tool-play.  I remember making a cutting board, a bread knife made from a piece of saw blade, and this silly little toy called a 'do nothing machine' which was actually quite clever.  

This is the only thing I have left of the stuff I made in metal shop, which included a twisted brass bracelet and a lantern that we had to hammer nails in to make a design like old fashioned lanterns.

I was examining this mushroom and it hit me that I was only 12 years old when I made this.  First we had to hammer, shape and solder the brass base, which is about 2" tall.  Then cut, hammer and shape the metal top.

Then sprinkle the enamel powder on top, melt it, and add the enamel threads.

I'm pretty proud of this seam.  I loved to solder.  

Industrial strength adhesive was used to glue the top and the bottom.

This project made me wonder if these classes are offered anymore and do they really teach children to use lethal saws and blow torches?  I was 12 in 7th grade...most of my classmates were 13.  That's still really, really young.  Yet no one thought anything of it.  We were excited to learn how to do these things, safely, and our parents received as gifts all the stuff we made.  There wasn't a single complaint from the community or self righteous parent thinking that it was 'too dangerous' to let kids use blow torches.

Just more proof that the 70s were better than now when it came to 'live and let live'.

New and Retro

Pinterest is, of course, featuring tons of holiday themed projects right now, including snow globes from jars.  It looked pretty straightforward, all I needed was a jar, something to put inside it, glue, glitter, water and glycerin.  I found that Santa figurine at The Watchamacallit Shop in town for $2.00.  I didn't have a jar that fit, except the pickle jar in the fridge which was full of, well, pickles.  I dumped them into a tupperware and started the project. The Pinterest project calls for the use of hot glue.  I HATE hot glue.  It never ever works for me.  Ever.  Stuff always comes unglued and there are always those annoying spider webby type strings that stick to everything.  I asked around and it was suggested that I use epoxy or a clear vinyl caulk.  I bought both.  Since the caulk wasn't supposed to touch water for at least 2 hours, I used the epoxy.  Huge mistake.  The stuff stinks so incredibly bad that this water globe has been sitting outside for over a week.  Overall, the idea worked fine - the glycerin helps the glitter float down slower.  But next time I have to use a different adhesive.

This to illustrate how the 52 Reasons Why I Love You cards came out.

The candles were still out from the storms in November so why not add some sequins.

Now for the Retro portion of our program.  When I was a kid, I always received craft kits on my birthday and Christmas because there really wasn't much for me to do during those long winter/indoor months.  When I was about 9 (1973), I received a rather complex ornament kit, which would require more than a day or so to make, and only with adult supervision.  These had to be carefully popped out of the wood frames, stained, painted, the bases put into place, glittered & decorated with little figures...

on both sides.  And after all these years I've just noticed that I stuck this deer on facing the wrong direction.

There's a little deer in the bubble wrap baggie for this ornament that needs to be re-adhered.

When we are able to finally have a large tree, I will be able to use them again.  But for now they are carefully packed away, and I'm very fortunate that they have survived nearly 40 years, being shipped to the west coast and then all the moves since then.

These last three were made by me, probably around the same time period of December, 1973.  They are those Make-It Bake-It melted plastic pellet kits.  I used to love making these and I'd still do it if I could find them.

This one is my fave.

Shared Memories: The Bad Kind

All these years, I thought it was just me.  36? 37 years now?  Convinced it was just me.

I had a 5th grade teacher who was.....odd.  It's nothing that I can pinpoint, but it's just a feeling I had.  I didn't like being alone in the class with him, if I was staying after for extra help, or had gotten to school early, before most of the school buses arrived.  He made me uncomfortable.  He never touched me, or did anything overtly inappropriate, but it was just a feeling I had.  He kind of...leered.  He sometimes made strange comments which were subtly inappropriate.  I just wrote it off as me just not clicking with him.  I liked a lot of my elementary school teachers, but not all of them, and he was one that I disliked.  

I will, however, share a story with you about that year, to give you an idea of what he could be like.  It's something that has stayed with me my entire life because I was so scared, and he seemed so wickedly amused by what he had asked me to do.  A bit too amused.  I had been having trouble with a bully that year.  She was in the 6th grade.  She never actually hit me, except sometimes punching me in the arm or shoulder, or shoving me.  Mostly she terrorized me with words and threats, extorting my lunch money or making me sneak candy to school to give to her, or else, and she seemed to take great pleasure in the fact that I was scared of her.    Back then the elementary school classrooms were divided into "Clusters", separated by 'walls' of bookcases.  That year my Cluster included my 5th grade class, the bully's 6th grade class and 2 4th grade classes.  We had the same teacher for all subjects from the second we arrived in the morning till the second we left in the afternoon, except for gym, art and music.  So this girl and her 2 toadies, also girls, got great pleasure in tormenting me at recess.  They were tough girls, the kind you knew would end up as the hardcore partiers once they hit their teens.  

I never understood why this one girl chose to despise me, b/c I actually was close friends with her sister and brother who were in my class, and they were constantly telling her to leave me alone, but she wouldn't.  One day the 3 of them hadn't come back to their class after recess.  My 5th grade teacher told me to go check the Girl's Room for them.  Why me?  Why a 5th grader?  These girls are in the 6th grade! Why the same 5th grader who is being actively bullied by these girls?  I didn't want to go.  I remember my eyes widening at the request, but I was mute, unable to speak.  I got up from my desk and stood there, all eyes on me, my face getting hotter and redder.  He came over, smiling in that creepy 'sweet' way.  He told me it would be alright, and gave me a shove towards the door to our Cluster.  I went out and went into the bathroom.  There they were, and I was trapped.  They came at me slowly, the ringleader in the front.  She put both hands on the door on either side of my head and got up in my face.  She hissed through gritted teeth that if I told that they were in there, I was dead.  I don't know if I nodded or spoke or what.  She left me go without the pounding I was fully expecting.  I went back to the class room, sick, stressed, pale, shaking. I sat down without making eye contact with anyone, hoping that I was invisible. Wanting to be invisible.  My teacher asked me if they were in there.  I whispered, "no", and stuck my nose in my book, my face burning, heart racing, sweating like a pig.  He knew damn fucking well what he was sending me into.  He knew they were in there.  He knew they were bullying me on the playground.  Just a wee bit sadistic, don't you think?  The girls were busted and somehow, miraculously I was left alone and didn't face sure death at the next recess like I thought.  I often wonder if they were told to stay away from me.  I don't know.  But it wasn't my 5th grade teacher who stuck up for me.  

One of my dearest friends, who was also my babysitter in the 70's when I was in elementary school and she was in junior high (we're only 4 years apart and we rode the same school bus) has been posting photos of her old yearbooks from Sandwich from the mid 60's through the mid 70's.  It was a small town then, so we all knew the teachers and staff, as class after class would make their way through the same teachers on their way up.  It's been so cool to see the pictures of everyone the way I last remember them.  Names long dormant in the deepest parts of my mind are coming back as easily as if it were yesterday.

My friend made a comment about the 5th grade teacher that I also had, 4 years after her.  She was afraid of him and he'd been pretty abusive.  That opened up a dialogue between several fellow female students who also had him for their teacher too.  As it turns out, we all had the same experiences with this man.  He was 'off'.  He terrified.  He was abusive.  He threw one kid up against a cement wall.  Passive-Aggressive. He really did say the strange, veiled inappropriate things I also experienced.  None of us complained to anyone.  We were all too scared.  We didn't want to make waves.  We thought it was 'just me'.   

Can you imagine the sense of relief I have right now?  All these years I thought it was 'just me'?  But it wasn't.  These are other women who were in various graduating years, not just mine.  We all drew the short straw when we were assigned to his 5th grade class.  I don't know what happened to him after I finished the year.  We 6th graders moved into a different part of the school the following year, then it was off to the 'new' high school after that.  I didn't think about him unless I saw my 5th grade class photo, which was fairly often because I've always had easy access to all my class photos.  Those feelings would come back and I'd just dismiss it as me misinterpreting things he was saying.  I assumed that I was the only person who thought they'd heard what they'd heard, and that no one else felt that way.  That I was the only one. 

The thought that, deep into the 20th Century, into the mid 1970's, abusive teachers were allowed to keep their jobs shocks me.  Kids weren't encouraged to rock the boat.  I never told my parents about the things he said because they wouldn't have done anything.  Even at age 10, I knew it would do no good. It would have been a scandal.  I would have been told to suck it up and the school year would be over soon.

I'm glad that times have changed.