Monday, March 7, 2011

Slacking..............

I have been slacking real bad on my clay work as of lately. Not because I have been lazy but because I have just had an awful lot of stuff going on, and it even seems it has hindered my creative flow as well.

My 86 year old father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer last February and I have been driving 200 miles a day 4 days a week for his treatments. Besides working 40+ hours a week at a full time job it has been a real struggle. I guess the treatments are working to a point because when he was first diagnosed they gave him 4 months, maybe 6 tops. Well he is still with me and still getting treatments. He has shown the doctors what will power is all about.

There for awhile I did take advantage of sitting for 3 hours sometimes 4 in his treatments to make a couple of things but just not as much as I would have liked. I had to be careful what I was dragging in to work on because of the sterile environment of the chemotherapy room. As for the creative juices, my brain at times was quite mushy, I think it still is mushy from being exhausted all the time. I am not complaining because I would do it again if necessary.

While sitting at one of his chemotherapy treatments I had confiscated some electrical wire from one of the maintenance men where I work at. I started picking away the insulation and noticed there were quite a few strands of copper woven together. The copper wire was quite fine about a 24 or 26 gauge which would be just right to use for some wire work and clay I was thinking about for a pendant. The following day my wire was still unused until I remembered I had a crochet hook with me. I started to crochet different sized wire balls. They were quite fun to do. The day after that, the balls of clay I just jerked up from my scrap pile was made into different sized flat discs. The hard part was getting them home to bake without drastically distorting their shapes. Some did come out wacky but I baked them anyway. After baking and putting together I think wacky gave it character.  I guess everyone else can decide.