To get this off my chest at the beginning: it was a surprisingly emotional day. For once my emotion wasn’t political rage or medical despair, but sympathy. I watched almost every minute of the state funeral for Bush 41. While he was in office, I had plenty of political disagreements with him. In recent years I realized I’ve moved on from all of them. (I only have so much energy for dealing with life, and holding grudges drains more of it than I’m willing to spare. I’m not wasting a single calorie of energy on negativity for the political issues of the early 90’s.) I watched people who loved 41 with all their hearts, both family and friends of his, and I saw crowds of people who genuinely respected him too. I enjoyed the melodious tones of John Meacham’s eulogy. I took a phone call during all of Mulrooney’s and the first half of Simpson’s. And on this day, I felt nothing but sympathy for Bush 43’s aching heart. Pageantry and ceremony does this to me. It makes me a little weepy when chapters in living history come to a permanent close. It did it again today.
I did what I hoped to do, and got the lights on the tree in time for night one of the Christmas campaign of D&D. I meant to get a few more decorations spread around the house, but I got out a couple key ones: the Burl Ives Snowman around which I set out my party favors that I made (more on that in a second), and the Abominable Snowman who doubled as the Jack Frost (NPC) figurine for our game. We were told to dress as our characters, so I pulled out the frumpy pink jacket I made last year for Brn, and wore jammies with wine glasses all over them (with “Santa’s little helper” interspersed.) I also braided my hair a bit like a dwarf in this world would, but alas, I had no beard to braid also. Mr Smith-Park’s character is “San’ta Claus” (sic) so we acquired a red plush onesie for him, with a black plastic belt and pointy, white-tipped hood. We didn’t tell anyone about it in advance, so it was a complete surprise to the others.
I have wanted to show off the above-mentioned party favors for weeks. At first they were intended to give to everyone for our group trip to see Fantastic Beasts, but not all of them were dry by the time we left, we went in two different cars, and they wouldn’t fit in my purse anyway. I made unique wands, each strikingly different than the others, from natural branches. Several were aspens from the cabin, plus two or three pine from there too. Three or four were black walnut from the tree that died suddenly this summer, on the neighbor’s side of the fence (but they were from branches we cut off our side last year). I peeled the bark off of them months ago, and slowly over time I finessed them. I bought a tiny craft knife to pair with my hefty folding pocketknife, and sculpted where appropriate. I tried a couple of different carving techniques to shape them, from keeping them natural but sanded to carving a deep spiral all the way down an aspen branch. I went and bought a wood burner, and discovered an incredibly satisfying art tool I’d never considered before. I even burned a scrolling vine design all the way down the spiral, and I was quite pleased with the result. Some wands had their entire surface burned to smooth and seal them (which takes forever!!) Some were rubbed with a Danish oil in a black walnut tint, after I discovered that the spray spar varnish I had from five years ago refused to dry anymore. I instantly regretted using it on the spiral one, because its grain was so open from the carving. I had to reshave it and sand the fool out of it to get it close to its original color. I will need to put a different stain on it to repair it, but I’m leery of doing it without a wood conditioner.
Once the wands were ready, I arranged them on the table, and told the gang to pick one. I repeated Ollivander’s words of caution, “the wand chooses the wizard.” I wasn’t about to influence who got which one.
When neighbor T asked me what the core of the wands were, in the style of the Harry Potter universe, without missing a beat I gave him the only answer possible in my house: “cat hair.”
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