Being a Mom

This past weekend turned out very differently than I had anticipated. Instead of working on my video for the Fans & Lace Afghan Square, I ended up helping my 10 year-old son (also known as Thing 2) finish a project for school.

He had picked a rather ambitious project. His class at school has been reading mystery books and then doing a unit of study about them. As part of that they each needed to create something at home to bring in for a presentation at school this past Monday.

His at home project was to build a model of the mansion where much of the story took place in his book. He decided his model would be a sort of doll-house that would open up and show the various levels of the house.  He had 4 weeks to work on it, but he had a little trouble realizing how big a project this really was. Then this past week he realized he had a lot of work to get done.

We had already picked out a large cardboard boot box with a hinged lid to use for the “house”, so he just needed to decide what he wanted to do with the interior of the house. We have lots of cardboard and cardstock from our re-cycling bin to use, so supplies weren’t a problem.

I did all of the cutting of the heavier materials with a utility knife because he was scared of how sharp it is. Right as I was telling him that you just have to be cautious and you won’t hurt yourself I managed to slice my fore-finger on my left hand.

We kept working on the project and he emailed his teacher to see if he could have an extra day. Yesterday evening was the wild push to finish the project. I stayed up late doing the last of the hot-gluing bits and bobs in place.

We all learnt a lot on this project, I learnt I need to teach my boys to use sharp blades and the glue gun. Yes, they might end up cutting themselves or burning themselves, but that is part of learning to work with those tools. Chances are they are less likely to hurt themselves initially. I know I rarely did any injury to myself when I first worked with any of those tools.

Familiarity with the tools over time may have dulled my fear, thus the current injury. Not helped that my attention was divided between the task of cutting and talking to my son. Seems to be one of the dangers of motherhood, constant distractions.

I spent the rest of the weekend with a bandage on my finger. Total pain in the backside when I want to crochet because that is the finger I use to feed my yarn into my work. The yarn kept wanting to catch on the bandage.

I also need to re-film one segment for my video because of the upload issues last week. Somewhere in all the mess of that adventure one segment was completely corrupted. I have been hesitant to re-film with a bandaged finger though.

I hope to be back in my studio filming in another day or 2. My cut is healing up pretty quickly. I did get this photo of the quantities of yarn needed for the Fans & Lace Afghan Square. For the actual amounts used in each round my post about changing colors can help you.

I won’t be doing any more cutting with anything other than scissors the next couple of days, hopefully that means I will be able to get my video completed before this weekend.

*Update October 21, 2016 9 p.m. Not quite to the finish line with the video still, though loads closer. Looking like Monday before it is on YouTube. I’m taking most of tomorrow off from work to meet with a dear friend in Denver for brunch and some museum time. Thanks for your patience.