"You can't retire!" I said as we bumped forearms, that familiar COVID gesture that I won't stop using because handshakes? Ick.
"Oh, yes, I can!" she laughed. Her hair is a chic cloud of silver.
"Do you have plans for next year?"
"I'm going to take a year and just make things!"
I laughed too, with joy and affirmation at her plan and called out that it sounded like a dream. And maybe limitless creation is my dream, now that I think of it, although I know I'm such a multi-tasker (cough, short-attention-spanned dabbler) that a year of free time would probably mean an avalanche of new opened and re-opened projects.
But I did finish one this weekend, a quick craft that I found on TikTok, melting wax to stick three fingertips in, then closing the fingers together to form three joined wax cuplets that resemble a small flower blossom.
I lit three scented candles, then waited for a pool of liquid to form. We have a candle drawer in the kitchen for birthdays and stinky onion moments, and a yellow birthday cake taper caught my eye. The scented candles were all white so I lit and dripped the thin yellow one over the Paddywax metal box to mix in a little color. The resulting mix was a pale green I loved, even more so for its little dash of complicating soot.
The first dipping in the melted liquid was an intense sensation and the cups took a few long minutes to harden and turn opaque. I sped up the process by plunging the tips of my fingers in ice water, but no matter the temp, I wasn't able to adhere the cups together -- the wax was too thin -- but I managed to produce a few tiny individual blossoms. I pierced them with the tips of a branch left over from a flower arrangement and the result was ethereal, delicate and fragrant.
