Crafting Pains

My back hurts. My fingers ache. My eyes are strained. No, I did not just get back from a vigorous fight or running a marathon. I simply crafted yesterday.

This is not a new development of course, I have been crafting for years and have always had the aches and pains that come along with it. I constantly complain of joint pain, sciatica, scoliosis and just about anything else I can diagnose myself with. My boyfriend begs me to get it checked out, assuming anyone who so incessantly complains of pain must have something seriously wrong with them. But what is wrong with me cannot be fixed. I am a crafter through and through, bold and proud, and nothing is stopping that any time soon. I guess I just wanted to vent to a larger audience (probably three people) with this post.

When I work with clay, my fingers tense up to the point where they no longer listen to my commands. My hands form a rebellious claw, confidently illustrating why I should craft no further. Of course, it only takes a few cracks to get them back into fighting shape so I ignore their warning and soldier on. But I crack them back into place so often that they have swelled permanently. I jokingly call them my pregnant fingers and secretly pray they make rings big enough to fit over the biggest humps. Like my fingers, my nails also crack often. They break and bend and no matter what I do, they can't seem to stay more than stubs for any extended period of time. The constant breakage leads to hangnails and loose skin around the anails that I just can't ignore. I pull at them and bite at them until my nails bleed. My finger tips look like a horror movie. Ashamed at the thought of what first impression such gnarled hands make, I have ben trying to improve my nails. I slap myself when I pick at them, I curse myself when I bite them. So far, this self hatred has been improving the overall health of my nails, but we'll see how far I actually take it.

When sewing or beading or animating or clay-ing - basically general crafting - my body is in a hunched position for hours at a time. I like tp picture myself as an evil scientist working in a dank basement somewhere, avoiding detection from my nemeses until my world-dominating creation is complete. Though my illusions of granduer are entertaining, they are obviously not true. And while I have crafted some darker things (weapons, most recently), my actions do not justify the posture of an evil scientist. But what am I to do? Crafting with a stick-straight back is virtually impossible. So the hunchback of crafter fame (another illusion of granduer, but I couldn't resist the loose pun) I will remain, sore neck, sore back, acute scoliosis and terrible posture be damned.

Any crafting position will have you sitting directly on your ass, mostly unmoving, for a good few hours at a time. Sitting for prolonged periods has seemingly given rise to an overly sensitive tailbone. Any time I sit of a hard surface (ie, not my couch or bed), I need to viciously readjust until my tailbone has found some ass fat to protect it from the elements. I sometimes wonder if I have started to devolve and my sensitive tailbone is really just the beginnings of a tail. Though I highly doubt that, I do check on it periodically. The sitting has also given rise to sporaddic and painful bouts of sciatica. Shooting pains down my back and legs so bad they literally bring me to tears. For this, I have used icy hot patches to dull the worst of the pains. I have bought an ergonmic pillow for my chair at work which doesn't do much but make me look like an old ninny. Some cases are so bad, I am relegated to my bed until the pain subsides.

I guess what I'm getting at is that crafters suffer for their art. They sit in the same positions for hours, reeking havoc on their bodies, all to make cute stuffed animals or neat storage devices. While I do love to complain to anyone who listens, I would not change my grandma joint status if it meant giving up crafting.

Ninja Starz

These ninja stars were a fast an easy project. Cutting them out was difficult because I've never been good at cutting circles or other shapes into another shape. Hopefully I'll get better.

Stuffed NunChucks

I am currently making a stuffed weapons series. This idea was inspired by my boyfriend's want of a shotgun. I told him there was no way he was getting a shotgun in our apartment unless it was stuffed and so he challenged me to do so. I'm still making the shotgun, it's one of those projects that takes a lot of time and so naturally I don't want to devote any to it. These chucks were easy and fun. The red thing on the chuck on the left is an abstract dragon...this will be the hitting chuck, hopefully it will leave an impression on a sucker's face!

Expect more weapons to come.

Havin' a Gas

Gas masks are creepy. Red eyes are creepy. Double creepy.

Antlers

Antlers! I think antlers my be the most beautiful design found in nature. They are ornate and powerful. If I weren't against hunting animals for sport, I'd be sporting some of these babies above my fireplace - my imaginary fireplace. I'm not too pleased with this drawing, I mean I just used a bunch of dashes to make it look like there is some depth to the antlers and that didn't even work. Talk about lack of technique. I've never been one to shield my failures from the public eye - it would be impossible not to. But I do like one thing about this drawing and that is the slightly vintage feel the plaque on the green background gives it. Please excuse the fuckery of using the word vintage. I know it probably doesn't even bring out that feeling in anyone else, but I drew it when I was watching a lot of Melrose Place so I was in a place of throwbacks.

Love is All Around Us

Okay, so drawings may not be considered crafts, but I did a few over July 4th weekend because I was too lazy to work on my latest sewing project. Drawing is by no means my forte and I actually have a hard time enjoying or sharing my work. I try to make everything as simple as possible so I don't get too bogged down with how awful my detailing is. So, this drawing is super simple, just a few lines to show what's supposed to be there. I looked up 'couple kissing' in google images and came across one that was passionate and funny and could be broken down into simple lines and I'm actually pretty happy with the result. The squiggles are my signature drawing trademark - I use it to make my boring drawings pop a little more. The squiggles are actually just one long line (three in this case as I couldn't loop through the feet) so it takes a long time but makes for a good tv watching activity!

Blog Overhaul

There comes a time in a young woman's life when four blogs is just too many to handle. Along with this one, I have a crafting blog with two of my friends (http://crafterihardlyknowher.tumblr.com/), a 'just-cause' blog (http://whoknowskent.tumblr.com/), and a rules of New York blog with my brother (http://nwhycny.blogspot.com/). I rarely post on any of these, including this one. But this one at least had an excuse, it is only for things-in-boxes and I haven't been making too many of those recently.

I think I am going to combine all of my crafts into this blog. It will still be called Megan Finnegan in A Box, because it will include all of my crafting (successes and failures), putting me in a nice little box. I am not going to get rid of any of the other blogs, but I will probably be posting here much more often than the other ones. And by more often, I mean probably like once a month.

So anyway, expect more crafts!