Battered Hands at Home Redux: The Readers Speak

Last week, I wrote about the battered hands of people who make things and I used my own poor hands as examples. I heard from lots of you about your hands (and feet, and shoulders, and knees!) It is clear that artists and crafters and antiquers are willing to go to heroic lengths in pursuit of their passion!

I can’t resist sharing my favorite comments with you (I edited some of them slightly, for consistency). If you’re not familiar with these wonderful bloggers and the things they make and sell, you should take a peek!

Yeah, I have sliced open my foot with a rotary cutter before  . . . Hello, emergency room! (http://papooseclothing.blogspot.com/)

Mine are minor, mostly hot glue gun burns . . . hammered my thumb more than a few times, and got my arm caught up in my rose bush. Nothing major thankfully! (http:/monpetitchateaudecor.wordpress.com)

As an antiques dealer, my scars don’t show but are definitely present in my everyday. My aching body reminds me of my passion more often than I prefer! (But I wouldn’t trade it for the world!) (homeologymodernvintage.com)

Scars from my life of antiquing are mainly a left shoulder that has a torn rotator cuff or tendons that I got trying to carry “my end” of a piece of furniture that outweighed me by a lot! My husband forgets that he is a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than me and I get “my half”  . . . Craft scars . . . hmm. Lots of cuts, punctures, burns, a dining room carpet covered by a gallon bucket of gesso, bending over the sewing machine so close that I caught the thread feed in the forehead . . . I once was sprinting to the door to catch the (really cute) UPS man and tripped and tackled the portable ceramic heater. So he heard a big crash and I answered the door with bleeding kneecaps and hiding a burned arm! “Are you OK?” Oh yes . . . fine . . . yikes. (hopeandjoyhome.blogspot.com)

I don’t have scars from vintage hunts, but I do have a nice callus from my crochet hook and sometimes pricked fingers from cross-stitch and sewing!! Boy, it hurts when you get jabbed in the finger from a needle! (magnoliasattic.blogspot.com)

I’ve done the hot sugar thing too! Well, it was at a campfire, and someone’s marshmallow caught fire and they flung it onto my finger (ouch!) I still have the scar. In general though, I’m just a clumsy sewer. I’m always stabbing accidentally stabbing myself! (jessthetics.wordpress.com)

Yep, there are lots of scars. One time I put the drill bit of the Flex Shaft into the webbing of my thumb and first finger (yes I reversed and pulled it right back out). There are lots of cuts and you can tell I sew a lot! The one thing I always dreaded getting was “weaver’s bottom”. That is when you sit at the loom a lot, rocking back and forth and for some reason weavers tend to have a little more padding on their bottoms for cushioning!  (shuttlehookandneedle.blogspot.com)

I don’t consider a project finished until I’ve bled on it. Eww, I know. But that’s how I put my heart in my work. (creatingmiranda.wordpress.com)

I was heartened to know that we are a sisterhood (no men admitting scars so far!) of battered but brave, scarred but not scared, marred but marvelous makers!

And how about you? Have you marks from your making that you’ve yet to share?

 

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