A contemplative new year's eve...

Yesterday at Bran's house we began a crafting frenzy starting a Victorian feather tree! Stuff was flying all over the place as she hastily improvised in ways that both made my skin crawl and delighted me at the same time. Once she has it in her mind to get something done, conventional methods be damned! Come Hell or high water "thy will be done".
Here she is cutting a dowel down to size with what? A Dremmel! She gets her money's worth out of this all purpose tool; she's a regular MacGuyver with that thing. She uses the same drill bit on it to cut through a variety of materials as well as to drill holes. And when it's all the way in she uses the tool's chuck as a grinding burr!
I looked forward to getting the half started tree back to my house where I must say, I generally have everything I could ever want at my disposal.
The idea of a feather tree is a stick on a stand with several tiers of branches all sticking straight out leaving several inches in between tiers to hang ornaments. They are gorgeous and the possibilities are endless! We robbed the metal base from a 1960's lamp she had in the basement. We saved the middle stand part to be used on another project later and trashed the rest.
I made a rudimentary sketch of the tree last night before bed just to get the ideas flowing. Next time I'll use a softer lead so it shows up in the photograph.
Today I sharpened my technique until it was flawless! It took me a total of 3 hours of twisting, twisting and more twisting of black annealed wire onto the dowel to complete all the branches. I'm quite pleased with myself.
Once I get the feathers on it I will post another picture for your viewing pleasure.
Here is a "very Brady" clock I got from the thrift store to turn into something fabulous...
I'm not sure what to do with it yet. I'm thinking something with skulls, what a shocker right?
I only realized it is new year's eve about three hours ago! I thought it was tomorrow. No matter, I'm not a big new year's party-er anyway. I finished a glass of wine early and when I set it on the kitchen counter I thought Mixie just looked so cute curled up on the beaver pelt! Don't ask why there;s a beaver pelt on the kitchen counter. Actually I just got it out to try to photograph some ornaments I made to put on eBay. I keep it hidden so Roxi doesn't find it and chew it into oblivion.
Here's a shot of the ornaments. Aren't they adorable? I just painted the skulls on with a metallic silver Sharpie. I did them all free-hand yesterday and the day before. I like the skulls over crossed swords the best. Skulls are my "go-to" motif. As I was drawing them on I remembered drawing a skull and crossbones on a class mate's hand in fourth grade...
...I can almost remember his name; it was "La-something" or "De-something". He was a sweet and charismatic black boy. I had an eraser pencil thing. Instead of lead in the middle it had a white eraser, and I could draw on his brown skin and it showed up beautifully. We were both pleased with the results, kind of a "fourth grade tattoo".
Fourth grade was the most dreaded of ALL the grades for me, and drawing in my spiral bound notebooks or on a friend's hand were my only pleasures; like a tortured artist carving a bar of soap in prison it was my only creative outlet. I don't recall even having art class at that dreaded school. I felt like a prisoner, and facing an entire school year may as well have been a life sentence.
To simply say I hated school would be a vast understatement. I remember vowing to myself that no matter what I would not live my adult life feeling the way I did as a kid in school. I could not endure waking up every day to the same feeling of dread I felt every morning as I headed off to school. I was comforted by the belief that anything would be better than school; surely this would be an easy thing to attain! I honestly think I would have been happier as child laborer on an assembly line or machining bomb components.
To my great joy I can say I enjoy adult life looking forward to each new day. I fill my days taking care of myself, observing the world and creating things. Some days I create art, some days I bake, some days I repair things, and on the best days I write about it.

Thanks for sharing all these things with me.
I can't wait to see how I will live a better life in 2010 than all the years before it!
Happy New Year!