Hope Is A Thing Like A Feather

My grandma used to tell me that she could write as well left-handed and right-handed. That skill was given from her strict and totally mistaken grade school teachers who punished her for writing left-handed.  She also, she told me often, was fluent in mirror writing.  She could write quickly in writing that didn't make sense until you held it up to a mirror. I always wondered how useful of a skill was the mirror writing.  Maybe mirror writing was a form of entertainment before the advent of television. I, for one, never need to know how to do mirror writing until today. Today mirror writing came in handy. Today I learned I'm actually pretty good at it.  Consonants are easier in mirror than vowels.  You start at the left and it's not actually that hard to do.  Today I did something out of my comfort zone.  Today I did something I never did before. I prepared a resin sand block for a hot metal pour.  It's like sculpture in reverse.  Mountains become valleys and valleys become mountains.  Words and numbers have to be written flipped and backwards.  We got to the sculpture park in Franconia at 10 in the morning.  My plan included an image of a black capped chickadee with the words underneath it that read, at least I hope they read if I did it right, "Hope is a thing like a feather."  The words are the first line of an Emily Dickson poem. We used dental tools, spoons, butter knives to dig into the sand/resin to make our image. Some people with less intricate designs used drills and dremels.  I had a hard time getting started.  I had drawn an image of a chickadee on paper and eventually cut that out of the paper and traced it.  I dug the bird out and then added lines to indicate feathers.   I dug a spot out for the eyeball.  I hope I didn't go too deep on the eye or I will end up with a pop-eyed chickadee.  The letters were much easier.  I spent the full 3 hours bent over a table digging in the sand and perfecting my "negative" sculpture.  I worked so hard I rubbed the skin off the 1st and 2nd knuckles of my right pinky finger.  I had a little trouble on the first e in feather.  The center popped out of the top of the e but I hope it will still be readable.  I won't know until next week. On Sunday of next week we go back and they pour hot metal into our sand/resin molds.  I spent a day out of my comfort zone - it was fun!