The kapok madness continues. All those pod panels I gathered up on Wednesday? They have coalesced into nifty things. Like a pendant with very scrolly designs woodburned into it. I’ve two necklaces done now, but only one with kapok. Acorns were later thrown into the mix. I posted pictures in my gallery.
As for the poem inscribed on kapok pods, I still can’t seem to photograph it in the right light. I’m going to try it on another day…it was a bit overcast this evening. I want to get it near sunset, when the light is all drippy gold. The lighting was right the night before, but I couldn’t get the image sharp and clear enough. I want this to be perfect.
I’m kind of scared. Of being trapped in this little town. What with rising gas prices and a looming halt on my ability to travel, I worry that I’m going to be cut off from the people that I love who live in San Francisco, Tampa, New York. I’m having trouble finding a job here. There is simply more work in cities. I won’t be a terrified little mouse. But I will be a troubled manticore. It’s been at the corner of my mind for a while now, but it blossomed into full-on gloominess today. It wasn’t helped by the other things that happened.
The people who threw the job fair I attended last week sent me a form letter which arrived today. They told me they don’t want me. I am amused and a little sad, though I’d really rather not be in a commission-based sales environment.
And I mailed off the knife today. Finally finished it earlier this week, I am very pleased with the way it came out. B and I both worked on it. 5160 steel from a lawnmower blade, stacked leather handle dyed black, based on the Fairbairn-Sykes design. Brass pommel that we made and cast ourselves. This should have been a more triumphant moment than it was, seeing as this was the first commissioned knife I’d done. But…I brought it to the pack and ship store, and the woman at the counter asked me the contents of the box, as she needed to. I answered, “A handmade knife.” There was a guy who had come up behind me in line. When I was finished and turned to go, he said to the pack and ship worker, “I wouldn’t buy a knife made by a girl.” That moment is hard to match in terms shame, discouragement and hurt—a slap in the face. I went home and I cried. I think this is the only time I’ve ever felt justified in crying (only girls cry, they tell me—tears sizzle when they hit hot metal).
Everything else today seemed kind of dull and faraway after that—a little like a laundry list. I repainted the numbers on my green D&D dice, because the original paint had worn off. Went to retrieve a boot disk for my OS (my computer remains stubbornly dead—damned corruption of necessary files—but here’s to multiple machines in the house). Read some. Wrote some. Wondered if that guy’s sentiments hold true for more than just him, if other people wouldn’t buy knives from me because I happened to have been born with two X chromosomes…all the while thinking to myself with kind of listless sarcasm, “After all, I’m just a girl. Girls apparently don’t forge acceptable knives.”