"A" for Artistic

I am currently going for my Master's in Occupational Therapy.  Although the majority of my homework involves papers and discussions and typical school stuff, some of it also includes crafts.  Right now, I am learning how to do a double whip stitch for leather lacing.  Yes, I am graded on how well I can lace a piece of leather.  This is actually used by some OTs to test cognitive functioning.  Based on how long it took me to learn the stitch, I'm guessing I wouldn't score too high! 

But the leather lacing was NOTHING compared to the copper tooling project.  Basically, this project involves a thin piece of copper (or other metal) and a mold.  My mold was of the Liberty Bell (obviously I was the last person to choose their mold).  It started out pretty nicely and wasn't looking too bad.

One of the grading criteria was making sure all the little details showed up.  I spent close to an hour trying to make sure you could read "Pass and Stow", only to notice I completely wore the words off the mold.  So I took off my copper and flipped it over to the other side of the mold where the details were not worn off.  This just made the entire piece of copper look warped and sloppy, but you could read the words!

When I turned my project in, I mentioned to the professor all the work I went through to make sure the words showed up.  Her response:  "Oh my, in all these years I have NEVER noticed the words on finished products!"  Insert angry face.

On a brighter note, our next project includes stitchery of some sort (way more my style).  So I finally get to show off my new knitting skills that I learned this fall!

  

And even better yet, every time I put off my papers to do a little knitting, I can always use the excuse, "but I'm doing homework"!  Two thumbs up for OT school!