The World of Adults

Yep, I've finally turned 18 and to tell the truth . . . there's not much of a difference.  Although I am pretty psyched about the fact that I can buy my own spray paint now.  There are these really cool outer space pictures people do with spray paint that I've always wanted to try, but who knows when I'll ever actually have time to remember to do that.

On to what I have been doing.

For one, thinking.  I've been doing a lot of that lately.  Possibly too much of it.  What I really want to do with my life, career-wise, is work with movies - either making stop-motion puppets, building sets, making costumes, or designing stuff.  The problem is, I have no idea how to get there.  All my life I've been determined to graduate from college, but I'm suddenly wondering if I've made the right choices.  How is Illustration going to get me into the areas I really love working with?  I'm still confident that college in and of itself is most definitely the right decision, but maybe I should've more seriously considered trade schools.  Ugggh, can I go back to not being a "grown-up".  Nothing really seemed impossible at 17 . . . No!  Nothing is still impossible, I say!  If I want to be a puppeteer for MacKinnon and Saunders or a Miniature Builder at Weta Workshop, if I want to move to New Zealand and live in a Hobbit Hole with a vardo for a studio then, gosh darn it, BYU is going to get me there, whether they think they can or not!

I digress.  All you really need to know, is that I have decided what I want to do with my life . . . and it may or may not involve building a gypsy wagon in my backyard to function as an art/craft studio.

That actually felt a little cathartic and energizing to write.

Of course, other than contemplating my life decisions, I have also been creating.  In June, my family took a vacation to New Hampshire.  I was born there and then we moved when I was six (yes, I do still remember a lot about living there) but my oldest brother and his family still live there.  It was the first time we've actually flown out there, we usually drive for three days straight (we actually like road trips).  Flying is another story altogether.  Coming home, our flight out of Manchester was delayed an hour or so.  When it finally came in and flew us to Chicago we had supposedly missed our connection by about ten minutes.  So, being the spry youth that I am, I took off as soon as we got off the plane to see if our connection was still there and, lo and behold! it was still in the gate.  However, they had just barely closed the door and apparently there was absolutely no way of reopening it for us.  So we got to sit there and watch our plane sit on the tarmac for another ten minutes and then pull away.  A tad frustrating, especially since I had training for my first job the next day, but I ended up getting to stay in Chicago for a night and riding taxis for the first time.  It was a pretty fantastic adventure and we finally made it home and just in time for me to make it to my training.

Anyways, back to the actual trip.  It was, excuse my New England terms, wicked awesome.  If I don't make it to New Zealand, I'm moving back to New England.  One of the best things there are all the antique book stores.  One that we go to almost every time we're back there had an entire section devoted to art dolls and dollhouses.  Not even our library or even Barnes and Noble has anything like that.  I ended up getting two old Doll magazines; one from 1990, the other 1993 (I guess that isn't that old, only 20ish years).  For the most part, I just drew in my sketchbook while there, but the greatest creative endeavor was, actually, also tied to that bookstore.  My 9-year-old nephew got a book about wilderness survival and we quickly discovered the shelter section.  Upon returning home that day my nephew and I were determined to build a little fort in the woods surrounding their house (another great reason to live in New Hampshire).  We used some old rope my brother had to tie up larger sticks and logs and then we started stripping bark off of trees to tie brush and twigs to those to form walls.  It was going to have a closed-in roof as well, but we never got around to finishing it, which is very sad; my nephew and I had great plans camp in it one night when it was all finished.

 Sorry for the poor picture quality, I was using my iPod.  My nephew had this genius idea to uproot a bunch of moss and move it into the fort because it was super soft and bouncy.

 My nephew built this fire ring, thought it was too wet to ever make a real fire.

The outside wall that was actually sort of mostly finished . . . and my nephew's arm.


Like I said, building that fort was probably really the most creative thing I did out there, but I was having fun all the same.  Soon after we got back I began work on a Pioneer Rag Rug.  Next week I'm going on something called Trek with my church youth group.  Basically, all the youth between 14 and 18 dress up in old fashioned clothes and pull handcarts in the middle of nowhere for 3 or 4 days.  It's like Mormon Larping!  Well, not really, closer to historical reenactments.  I've been on one before and I think they're awesome and very spiritual and you get to make all sorts of friends.  I'm rambling again.  So we have this checklist of things we're supposed to be doing to get ready for it, like walking so many miles a day or learning a pioneer craft.  I really enjoyed making this and it got rid of a bunch of my fabric scraps.  I used the metal ring supporting this glass table we have as the form.  You're supposed to weave it on an old wagon wheel rim, but we didn't have any of those lying around unfortunately.  I'm totally taking this to University with me, now.  I'll put it in front of my bed or something (speaking of, I move out in exactly one month.  I made myself a countdown to when I move out).

 I enjoyed making the rug so much that I decided to do it again, but this time I'd make two small ones and tie them together around a little circular pillow I sewed.  I'll be using it as a seat cushion and a pillow while I'm on Trek.

Rather than trying to find the pictures I took of the finished treehouse for my portfolio I just took a quick inside view for now.  I'm a little unhappy with the outsides of the walls because of the varying thicknesses of the boards I used.  I wanted it to look like it was built out of scrap wood, but when you put it in scale, some of those boards would be almost three inches thick.  That's a heavy board to be nailing onto a scrap-wood treehouse.  Anyways, I ought to put up a picture of the deck some time, 'cause I do like that part a lot.  The things inside of it aren't really going to stay there, but I have an empty little soy sauce bottle that came with some sushi once, a sculpted cat I made a few years ago, and a susuwatari (soot spirit from My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) in the top corner.  I'm planning on sewing some sleeping bags and other camp-y stuff to put in it.  And some small dolls for my nieces to play with in it when they're a little older.

Earlier I mentioned that I made a countdown to when I move out.  Well, I actually made a drawing countdown, because I feel like I'm nowhere near as good as I should be.  I feel like I could have potential, but I just never apply myself to drawing, really drawing, all that much.  So each day, when I rip off a paper, I have something I'm supposed to draw.  I'm behind right now, but so far I've done a few portraits, used some drawing books my sister has, and when I had 42 days left, I drew 42 hands.  I actually really liked those hands.  However, I'm probably not going to upload any of those because #1 - they're just for practice and they're really messy and well, I don't feel like showing them to anyone and #2 - I don't have a scanner or photo editing software anymore, so I'm trying to keep posting pictures to a minimum until I have one or both of those things back.

However, I couldn't resist posting this project I've been working on recently.  In my room I have a box fairly overflowing with doodles and collage material (mostly doodles, though).  I take my sketchbook to school, but more often than not I just end up using my homework, notes, tests, and any other "important" papers to draw on.  Then, at the end of the year, I get attachment issues and I have to go through every single piece of paper from that school year and cut out all the pictures I like.  For the most part I've just been using them to collage boring covers of sketchbooks and notebooks, but then the notebooks get filled and I have to decide to either keep the cover or throw all that hard work away.  For some time, though, the thought of writing a completely random comic that had no planned beginning or end has been festering in the corners of my mind.  I once had the idea to take all the half comics I'd drawn on bits of schoolwork and try to mesh them together into one, but I knew that probably would never work.  But then genius struck.  I decided to try and use randomly selected doodles to form the outline of a comic.  I went through a few stages of how exactly some technicalities were going to play out and I finally (for now) decided to pull out 10-20 doodles/collage items at a time and use them to write a chapter.  At first I tried doing it doodle by doodle, then page by page but it was too much for the organizer inside me.  So, with great pleasure, I present to you Skin the Color of Alder (I got the name from something I wrote in the margin of my AP European notes once):

 Yes, this page is supposed to come second.  And yes, that is a diagram of a heart.

Again, I'm a little impaired in the way of computers right now, so sorry for the quality.  If you want to, I believe clicking on the pictures will make them bigger and easier to see.

I'm having so much fun trying to arrange my doodles into a coherent order and make them all connect to each other.  I constantly have to stop myself, though, because I start trying to figure out where the story's going past the first chapter.  I have to keep reminding myself that the doodles decide where the story goes.  I'm just here to connect the dots.

So my nieces were over again.  And we painted rocks again.  And I painted a dinosaur . . . again.

This little guy is a little grumpier than Herman.  Maybe it's because he doesn't have a space helmet.  Apparently rocks just look like dinosaurs to me.

Recently, as I've been packing up my life that is my bedroom, I've gotten into this tidy up mode.  I've finally found the drive to finish old projects that have been sitting around for who knows how long.  Such as  . . . this!

 I started this sculpture-doll-thing about one or two years ago when I wanted to learn how to make and use my own paper pulp.  It may have worked better if my paper didn't have shredded credit cards in it.  Anyways, it was sort of supposed to be a self-sculpture or something like that.  I made the dress from a worn pair of pants that I loved and then I gave her socks and sandals, a trademark of mine in the days of yore.  Then after a while I decided it was a stupid idea and set it aside.  Besides, it was just going to be another waste of space that I would want to throw away in another few years.  Well, after deep contemplation over it, I decided to let it live.  In any case, I had to have something for that little sketchbook I made to go with.  So I carved a fishing rod from a chopstick, turned that into a waltzing matilda all while still grumbling about how much space and materials it was wasting.  But, whilst gluing her to the cardboard box, I used my pencil cup to prop her up while the glue dried and I really liked how it looked.  So, in a stroke of functional genius! I glued my pencil cup to the box, too.  Haha!  Functional art!  Take that, internal criticism!

I also found time to finish this project.

I've had this sub-par head connected to a wire skeleton stuck to my bed frame (with magnets) since about winter.  I'd always wanted to make him into an astronaut, but designs kept eluding me.  I purchased a quarter machine toy, just so I could get the case to make him a helmet, but it ended up being too small.  I think that was the real discouragement to me.  Everyday I'd look at him and say "one day, one day I'll find you a good helmet, and then you can be an astronaut."  Well, I was taking apart a sewing machine a while back and I loved the porthole-esque piece I found that had been part of the bobbin case.  I suddenly had an idea for the helmet.  Not long after that, I had the rest of him, too, all in a matter of just about two weeks. I made his helmet on my birthday because my friends were over having an art party (or "arty").  I don't feel like I was very productive, but I certainly enjoyed watching one of my friends make a knife sheath out of silverware.  It was so cool-looking! Anyways, I'm unhappy with the backpack, but I think I might redo it at a later date.  Y'know, when I haven't been working on him nonstop for two days straight.  Blergh . . .

Also, I did not make the Tardis in the background.  It's a Yahtzee game my parents gave me for graduation.  I thought it made a nice prop.

That about sums it up.

Ugh, I'm too drained to give tips today.  However, if you have any questions about how I make stuff, feel free to ask.  I like question.

I do want to share this link, though.  I read it last month and it really inspired me.  The artist is Jenny Dolfen and she does some of the most amazing Tolkien-inspired artwork I've ever seen.  She's one of my favorites.  Oh, and a bit of a fangirl moment, but I left a comment on this link and Jenny Dolfen actually responded.  I totally had a (extremely brief) internet conversation with a somewhat famous artist that I happen to love.  How cool is that?
http://autnott.deviantart.com/art/Twenty-year-old-Jenny-uncovers-the-mystery-of-art-375233524

The Cone of Shame

I deserve to be wearing one right now for not posting the last few months.  I'm really sorry.  It was getting near the end of school and I had AP Tests and graduation to worry about.  Speaking of, I'm officially a high school graduate now.  Yay!  Now back to the apologies.  I really was extremely busy.  I was sloughing classes the last few weeks of school so I could finish my AP Art Portfolio and to get some extra sleep in.  And, of course, now that school is over and done with, our computer decides to stop turning on which happens to be the computer that has all my photos and Photoshop on it and is the computer that my tablet hooks up to and also our scanner.  So, you'll be getting some real old stuff and not so great pictures today.  When we get our computer back, I'll be able to upload all the drawings I've been doing and better edited pictures.

Before I talk about what I have been doing, I'd like to talk a little about what I'm planning on doing.  So, I've just graduated high school and I'm off to University in just a few months.  I've already changed my major three times, but currently I'm planning on going into Illustration.  I hear it's really hard to get into, but I'm going to try anyways.  I register for classes tonight and I'm planning on taking Drawing in the fall.  It sounds so scary and intense to me, but also exciting and adventurous.  Yeah, that's about it - on to other stuff.

I'll start with some older pictures.

These is just a compilation of random doodles I had uploaded on a separate site from my sketchbook.  I really need to start getting away from pointless doodles and start creating actual pieces that have backgrounds and such.

I love art memes.  They're so much fun and really good for practicing.  This is another old one I had on my other site.  As is this next one.

Just a random picture that I really liked.

My nieces were down a few weeks ago and we did chalk drawings.  It was tons of fun.  My niece made this outline of me and then I just filled it in.  I'm incredibly pleased with that boot.

Look familiar?  A girl in my friend's painting class really wanted me to make her one, so I did.  I completely redid the pattern and I think it's a lot better than the first.  I put beans in the bottom so it actually sits well, this time.   I also saved the pattern, because I think I want to start making more of these and maybe set up an Etsy store sometime in the future.  Of course, I'll have to have a little better quality and get some decent photos, but I think it's worth a try.

More chalk drawing.  This was at our school's end of year rock concert thing.  A friend of mine brought a little box of chalk, which was quickly decimated by about 50 high school students.  This was my little offering.

Now for some recent stuff and somewhat better pictures.  This is Pumkin (purposely spelled like that) from the Youtube series Baman Piderman.  I made it for a friend of mine for her birthday.  I really love how his sweater turned out.  Also, it's the first time I've ever succeeded at needle-felting.  Here are some more angles and detail shots of him.

 This was one of my last art dolls for my AP portfolio.  His name is Steward, and yes, that tree is supposed to be his head.  Seriously, somebody asked me where his head was once.  My favorite part was grass-staining his pants.  My neighbors must wonder sometimes what I'm doing out in my yard rubbing a tiny pair of pants across my lawn.

I love how this picture turned out!  In case you're a little confused, he has little pots and bags of trees tied to the strap on his shoulder.

 

 He's a pretty good tree-climber.

 So, I've been doing a lot of rearranging in my room lately, trying to figure out what I'll be taking to college and whatnot, and my art dolls outgrew their little shelf and I moved them all to the top of my art supply bookshelf.  From left to right there's: Baby Harry Potter, Beowulf, Grendel, Bengta, Steward, the Lady Greene, Mo the the Stop-Mo armature I, Admiral Ackbar, Audubon, Kamaji, Truman, and Hagrid.

 For Graduation my sister and brother-in-law gave me a Hobby Lobby gift card.  I spent it on a bottle cutter and made myself a set of drinking glasses to take to University with me in the fall (just two and a half more months 'til I can move out . . . not that I'm counting).

 I had a Fanta bottle to go with my Coke and Sprite ones, but it broke down the middle in the hot and cold water baths.

 These two were the cleanest separations and they really look the best.

 I love doing art projects with little kids, especially my nieces.  The last time we had them over they collected rocks from our garden and wanted to paint them.  So I joined in on the fun and painted a space-dinosaur.  He is definitely coming to University with me.  (Side note: I noticed someone earlier saying University like people usually say college (like without putting an article in front of it) and I decided I wanted to start saying it.  I mean, I am going to a University, not a college, so why not?)

 This is the reason I didn't post this blog entry yesterday.  I wanted to, but my mom commandeered me to help build a chicken coop.  It was pretty awesome and fun.  The picture makes it look a lot simpler than it actually is.  There's a door on the back that my mom and I put up with a bunch of random hardware we got at Ace.  There were a lot of obstacles, but my mom and I managed to finally get a pretty sturdy, effective coop built before my dad came home.  And yes, it is the bottom portion of a child's playground.  We've got three adorable little chicks - Suds (who I really want to start calling Camilla, like from the Muppets) the white one, Danny Kay, and Rose Tyler (they're both brown).

 This picture and the last ones are my very last project I put in my AP Portfolio.  It's a doll tree-house.  I had the more finished pictures on my other computer, but I can't get them now.  Even now, though, it isn't entirely finished.  It still needs a ladder, a railing, a crow's nest, a ladder to the crow's nest, some props, and possibly a second tree house to connect to it.  Also, it's the first time I've ever built something to scale.  It's all in 1:12 scale.  And I intend on making all the props in 1:12 as well.

Installing the floor on the completed frame.

 A little out of order, but the finished frame and just the first two floorboards put in.  The floor boards were possibly my favorite part to install.

 I felt like the extra pieces of floor board looked pretty nifty stacked up inside the tree house.  Genre detail, I suppose.

 Window frame.

 Completed Floor.  I love the look of it.  I'll have to take more pictures of the completed-looking version that has walls and shingles and stuff.  Oh and a tire swing.  You can actually see the tire I used at the bottom of this last picture.  I went to DI and bought a broken toy tractor just so I could strip one of the tires off.

Okay, one more thing before I close.  I missed two more days of creating.  One was while we were on Tour in Disneyland.  We got back to our hotel at practically midnight and I hadn't had time to do anything.  The other was the day of Graduation.  I spent the morning at a friend's where we talked about creating a stop-motion video, but I never actually did anything.  Unless you count scribbling in my niece's coloring book while being half-asleep, or pretending to do macrame with my gold cords.  So it looks like I'm three days behind, now.  Still, that isn't too bad, I suppose.

Expanding Horizons
One of my best friend's painted this picture and I absolutely love it.  So I'm going to show it to you guys and make all of you love it.  She's fantastic and one of my favorite people ever (and I still owe her a birthday present :( )

Tips or Whatnot
Do art with friends.  You can bounce ideas off each other and get friendly opinions, plus, it's nice to do what you like with people you like.  Art parties are the best parties.  The more the merrier and all that good cliche stuff.

March Roundup

Woot!  It may be the last day of the month, but, hey, at least I still remembered.

Wow, it's been so long I'm not even sure where to begin.  Sorry, but this will probably be a bit of a more pell-mell post, I suppose.

This is Bengta (or Marie Antoinette, if you're my dad). I made her as one of my art dolls for my AP concentration. If you can't tell, she's a marionette. I had loads of fun making her. I started with the arms and legs. I had been attempting to make a stop-motion armature using all these wooden dowels, but it kind of failed, so, rather than wasting all the wood I had already cut, I decided to re-purpose some of it into a marionette. The arms and legs were already cut to the right size and had little holes drilled in them, so they were perfect. I painted each member of her body black, and then painted grey over it. Her torso is stuffed fabric with a dowel inserted at the top for the neck. The head is a wooden ball I acquired from Hobby Lobby, painted to match the rest of the body, with a tassel glued to her head which is also attached to the main string supporting her. I sewed a simple skirt and glued it to her torso and embellished it with a lovely yellow ribbon. Her hands and feet I sculpted from polymer clay and then painted. At the moment, the strings controlling her hands are not very efficient as the hands don't weigh them down enough, so I may change that in the future. She really isn't the most versatile of marionettes, but for the most part, she's at least functional.

My dad and I made the stand out of a board I got at Hobby Lobby and various parts found in our garage. Overall, I think she might be one of the most professional looking things I've done. There are some problems with it, though, like the strings aren't quite right and you can see some of the glue from her hair on her forehead, and she isn't weighted quite properly, but other than that, I really like her.

This was one of my last Breadth pieces for my portfolio.  My concept was sort of a quilt and a stuffed animal all rolled in to one.  I wanted it to radiate comfort.  I don't really know whether I succeeded or not, but for the most part, I'm happy with how he turned out.  Although, one of his legs is rather loose at the moment 'cause some of my friends decided to throw him around at lunch the other day.  I don't mind though, it was a good test to see how durable my sewing was.  I was going to count how many little squares I ended up using, but I lost count, just know that it was a lot.

Hooray!  I've been baking again.  One of my best friend's birthday was the beginning of this month and I still owed her a Tangled-themed Christmas present.  So I was kind of cheap and combined the two and made her a Tangled-themed cake.  I used a mix from a box (someday I'll have time to make things from scratch!) and the frosting is white chocolate raspberry flavored.  It tasted alright, but the smell of that frosting was powerfully strong and not entirely pleasant.  But, overall, I think it was a success.  Also, decorating a cake is a lot harder than painting, just saying.  I thought they might be about the same, but I was very mistaken.  That's why the lanterns turned into plain rectangles rather than anything more detailed and, y'know, lantern-looking.

 Now that the weather's a bit nicer and the birds are becoming more plentiful (and I got some outdoor varnish) I was able to put up my Birdhouse Guitar.  I haven't seen any birds around it, yet, but I really hope it gets inhabited soon.  *crosses fingers*

This is all part of my final breadth piece for AP Art (minus the fedora and the mustachioed manican head).  They're going to be Steampunk goggles with built-in headphones.  And yes, the headphones do still work.  I also wanted to rig up a little flashlight to hook up to the side of them, but I can't think of a way for me to do it that wouldn't look tacky or cost a lot of money.  All I need to finish these up is some black elastic.  And I might do a bit more work with the back to make it fit more snugly to my head.  Oh, and I also want to line the eye-pieces with sheepskin or something akin to it.

As far as drawing is concerned, I've been somewhat disappointed with myself.  I really enjoy the stuff I've been doing in AP Art.  But I miss having a 2 Dimensional art class.  However, I haven't been completely neglecting my drawing.  I still doodle on just about every piece of paper I can lay my hands on at school, but I'd rather not take the time to post all that.  This drawing is just something I thought up recently after I found out I got admitted to BYU.  I decided to draw a sort of evolution picture of Amanda throughout her education.  It was all for fun and I just did it on a whim.  It's not really meant to be taken seriously or anything.  I'll see if I can quickly run through each picture.  First, I went to a daycare-school-thing (it was sort of my proxy kindergarten, since New Hampshire doesn't do kindergarten for public schools) at Colby-Sawyer College called Windy Hill.  I have some really great memories of that place - like the first boy I thought I was in love with telling me that I had too many A's in my name (we were like, 4, okay?), and I discovered my joy for building things when I made a sailboat out of stuff we found on a nature walk and when my best friend and I built wooden castles for all the plastic animals in the toy room.  (How'm I doing on the whole 'quickly' thing).  Next we moved to Utah and I started first grade at Northridge Elementary where the mascot was the Nighthawks.  I have absolutely no good memories of that school.  I remember having to walk home by myself one day because my English teacher (yes, we had different teachers for different subjects like you do in high school) kept me after school because I was too slow at copying down a poem (and so the pain of having neat handwriting began).  Halfway through first grade my brother and I transferred schools to where my dad was working; Manila Elementary, home of the Mustangs.  These were the golden years of my childhood.  In fifth grade I moved schools again to be in the ALL program at Barratt Elementary (we were bobcats, there).  Fifth and sixth grade were not so golden.  I thought I was cooler than an ice box and no one else mattered.  Not a time of life I particularly enjoy looking back on.  Then came the ever-awkward years of junior high.  I had braces, my hair was terrifying, and my personality was stagnant.  Moving on.  High school has been pretty great; I've done a lot of growing and I'm extremely proud to be a caveman.  And now, in just a few months, I'm gonna be a cougar!  Yep, like I said, this is really just the product of being bored on a Sunday afternoon, nothing big and meaningful.

This is a project that I did for my dad over the weekend.  His company is opening two new facilities and he asked me to design potential logos for them.  I like the girl on the horse a lot better, but the boy leaning on the fence is okay, too.  I drew the pictures first, without worrying too much about inner details and then I colored them in with a sharpie.

Okay, so it looks like I've been doing a lot more than I think I've been doing, but I still feel like I haven't been drawing enough.  These two pictures are the results of a project in this really cool book that I have called 52 Drawing Labs for Mixed Media Artists or something like that.  It's the coolest art book I have ever had the pleasure of owning.  For this project you had to take clay creations done by a child and draw them however you wanted to, but in a way that still captured the childlike innocence of the original creation.  Like I said, really cool art book.  The first is a watercolor and gold gel pen painting of a squid/octopus thing that was either made by my dad or one of my older siblings.  I recently got my nice watercolors back from my art teacher and I was itching to use them again, so I did this one first.  Second, I drew, first in pencil and then outlined in pen, this interesting clay creation that my oldest sister made (you'll have to tell me what it is, Addie).  I don't know exactly what it's supposed to be, but I really loved the look of it, and then I turned it into a floating rock.  The last one I did was an owl that my brother made in a Ceramics class.  I used my set of acrylics and painted it with my fingers.  Finger painting sounds all fine and dandy, but you really can't load paint on your fingers like you can in a brush.  It doesn't smooth the same way and the paint dries a lot faster, but still, I like how the owl turned out.

My recommendation for the month would be to check out that book I just mentioned.  It's really creative and you really don't have to have any drawing experience/skills to create some really cool-looking things with it.

And my monthly tip?  Ugh, this is this the hard part.  Take some time to get to know some basic power tools.  I've always been kind of afraid to touch anything in our garage (and not just because they're covered in spider webs) but lately I've been using a Dremel my dad recently gave me and our power drill a lot.  They are so handy for small projects, especially when dealing with wood.  And now I have two new soldering irons from my neighbor to learn how to use.  I'm really starting to fall in love with tools and woodworking machines.  They're so nifty!