I'm never quite sure what to name blog posts like this, because they are often multi-themed and sometimes lack focus, so for this, I shall wait til the end to title it and see if that works better than trying to think of one before writing.

I have grown an unusual appreciation of doing tasks by hand lately rather than using machinery that would make the job a lot easier/more convenient, etc.  For the first time this summer, I had to wash all of my dishes by hand because my apartment did not come with a dishwasher (or microwave, or countertops, etc.).  For the first time ever, I washed some of my clothes in the sink, mostly because I didn't have time to run a full-load in the washing machines down here, but also because it's a lot cheaper.  The one thing that struck me about running all of these mundane procedures by hand is that it affords me the ability to be as thorough as I desire with something.  It even lessened my frustration with the task, because often I would get upset at washer/dryers because even after inserting an exorbitant amount of quarters, they still did not do anything of a good job of cleaning my laundry.

I think this concept is one of the reasons that stained glass crafting is appealing to me so much, because I can rely solely upon the work of my hands and be as delicate or as rough as I please and not have to rely (for the most part) on any type of black-box machine to do the work/art for me in a way that I might not want it to exactly. I guess this is why some artists don't like to use computers.  Not only can they make the art more impersonal, but for some, they never quite work as precisely as one's own fingers.

I love these little lessons that everyday chores can teach you.