A few weeks ago, pandemic isolation was getting to me. But then again, the dead of winter is always hard on me. First there is the lack of sunlight. Seasonal affective disorder is real, and does my depression no favors.
Then there is the damp cold weather that I feel in my joints, reminding me of my misspent youth. I just ache all winter. I ache less in Central Mississippi than I did in North Carolina, but I still ache.
My primary depression management strategy has always been making. Whether gardening or cooking or building a chicken coop or deck, turning a pile of chaotic parts into an ordered result hits my soul in all the right places.
But the reality is that pretty much everything I love to do is off limits in December and January, except cooking. And this year, I’m cooking for two of us, just like I do every damn other day of my life.
Add a global pandemic and political chaos into the pile and you get a perfect shitstorm inside my head.
So I was racking my brain trying to find a way to make things that I can do inside (where it is warm and well lit) and that challenge me, yet are not projects so huge I lose interest in them. I decided to try making some spoons.
Why spoons? Well, they are relatively quick to make, and yet require a bit of skill to do. And it’s something I’ve never done before, and if I were to do a number of them, I would probably get better over time. And, to satisfy my Protestant guilt, they are useful to boot!
I had a nice gouge to carve out the bowl, and bought myself a sloyd knife for the hand carving. I will write a post later on the technique, but to begin with I watched a few YouTube videos and was on my way.
The first one turned out OK (that is it up there at the top), especially for a beginner effort, so I did another.
Then I decided I would make a spoon a day for 30 days. Today is day 12, and I’m posting each day’s spoon over on Instagram.
Whatever gets us through, right?