Being a school teacher is a mixed bag for creativity. On

the one hand, it gobbles up a bunch of my time. On the

other it gives access to vast amounts of material. Some of

these you can easily imagine -- old student papers that I

can roll in my sculpture sticks, cardboard, pencils that

students leave (more on that later).

But one thing you might not have thought of is sheet of

photos from myself given out by the company that takes our

pictures for the yearbook. Well, where there is a resource

there is an opportunity for creativity and mischief.

It is always a good idea to stay in the good graces of a

school librarian. I often come in and give the best

version of my bizarro routine. It amuses her and helps me

get some of the crazies out before I turn on my Zen-robot

routine for the students. One example is how many origami

frogs I have made in front of her [1]. I take almost any

dumb piece of paper we get sent and make a frog. The first

time I used the principal's copy code, I took a photo copy

of my hand giving the middle finger, showed her that, and

then turned that into a frog (middle finger buried within

the design of the frog, of course).

[1] I prefer the term paper-folding, but that's neither

here nor there.

So what was I to do with these glossy sheet with different

sized photos of myself? Well, I was going to throw it

away, but the librarian asked me why I didn't turn into a

frog? The real answer was that I didn't really initially

like how that glossy texture felt, and while this is just

one more indication that I probably somewhere on *the*

spectrum, I have learned not to tell people these things.

However, I am so mildly on the the spectrum that people I

can usually follow people's suggestions and not lock up.

And so I pulled that paper out of the trash -- how's *that*

for some junk punk? -- and folded into a frog, with my

photos on the outside.

I then realized this would serve my turn quite well in my

Project Mayhem, Christmas edition -- ie I am going to give

it as a present to my mum.

This got me started on making a package, a perfect excuse

to work with the sculpting sticks I have recently been

experimenting with. I was able to make two circles that

fit each other pretty well out of my sticks, and then

connect them so they are a real container. I am probably

going to line the outside with holiday wrapping paper, or

I guess I can use old student papers and then paint it.

The container *is* much more work than the frog toy in

question. But what mother doesn't want some pictures of

her only child?

Next topic! Pencils.

I have mentioned Phillip Stevens before. He has a YouTube

channel where he makes things, with a strong emphasis on

hand tools and what people with very little financial

resources can do.

He lives near a school and so he is able to source small

pencil stubs, which he then uses sticks cut from scraps to

make into pencil extenders.

Note 1: here in the States, what with all of the

carelessness of affluenza, the pencils I find are usually

way longer than what he finds. I am more likely to find a

full length pencil than a real stub.

Note 2: But I did find such a stub yesterday, so finally I

was able to do the short work on making a pencil extender.

Note 3: You know what grinds my gears? Pencil sharpeners.

Because pencils were foregrounded in my mind, I thought to

myself "can't I just sharpen them with a knife?" This had

never occurred to me, though web searches showed it is

perfectly obvious to a bunch of people, in particular

artists because it lets them get a larger surface area

exposed to make sketching easier.

I worked on the technique some last night, and I don't

think I'm ever going back. I'll probably just bring dull

pencils from school home and sharpen them with a knife in

batches and bring them back for my cup so I can allow

students to borrow pencils that they left on my floor

earlier in the year.

- +

I love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus

"net" (so, a work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at

sdf.org.

While we're adding boiler plate: this work is hereby in the

public domain. Do what you want with it.