Get Crafty!

Location: Lakeview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

Date: Sunday, May 05, 2013; 2:30-4:00 pm

I arrived at Lakeview Nursing and as soon as I entered through the sliding doors, I saw Emma waiting in the hallway.  While I thought that it was for our project to begin, she told me that she was waiting for her daughter.  Well, I suppose that it is definitely a better afternoon for her than anything that we would be doing.  What we would be doing, was making jewelry and flower pens.  Yes, I would be making jewelry.  Alisa announced this to the volunteer group, which comprised of regulars such as Sarah, Fran and Wilson.  It was an all-star crew for sure. 

Flowers for the pens

I had no idea what is a ‘Flower Pen’.  What it means is that you take a flower and then using colored tape, wind it around a pen, hence the name.  She had selected artificial flowers which had a long stem, and it needed to be trimmed in order to make it the right size.  The problem in this was that there was a thin metal wire running down the stem and it was a tricky proposition to cut it cleanly and not have a sharp edge sticking out.  I asked Wilson if he had anything in his car that would help us do that and his response was, “I can diffuse a bomb with what’s in my car”.   Hmm, yes.

And the 'Flower Pens'

We did not have many residents today though one of the regulars, Anna, had come.  I sat down with her and another lady who introduced herself as Petunia.  She said she had a ‘Cherokee Indian’ heritage and I said that I shared at least one of those words with her.  She mentioned that her doctor is an Indian gentleman and this was the second time that I have heard him being mentioned by one of the residents.  Furthermore, they talked well about him, meaning he was doing a good job.  I started making a pen with a flower and wrapping it around using the tape.  While doing that, I asked Petunia about herself.  She was from Arkansas and had always wanted to travel to places such as Paris and Rome.  She said that she never made it due to lack of funds. I said, “Me too”.  She said that did get a chance to travel domestically and had been to New York and Cleveland, though she liked New York better.  I said, “Me too!”  Speaking of vacations, Wilson was walking about and I pointed to him and said this man calls travelling to the aid of Hurricane Sandy victims as vacation.  He said why not since he got to see sights of disaster area and it counts!  The pen was coming about nicely and Petunia said that she had lived in Chicago since 1965.  She has one living sister and four brothers, who have all passed.  One of her late brothers used to be a Major League Baseball Player, who played for Montreal and the White Sox.  Petunia said that she been to several games and even met some of the MLB players through her brother.

Petunia's bracelet: Pre-knot

By this time the pen had been done, and it was time to give the jewelry a try.  The principle was quite simple, threading through the beads to make either a bracelet or a necklace.  Both, Petunia as well as Anna did not have sufficient dexterity to do this delicate operation, especially with some of the tiny beads.  On the other and, back in graduate school, I had been making miniaturized sensors using metal wires that were 2000^th of an inch.  I had to tie knots on a thin fishing wire to mount the sensor and then repeat twice to finish the device.  After making hundreds of those, this task I could do with my eyes closed, metaphorically speaking.  I started working on a bracelet for Anna and decided to follow a pattern with tiny colored beads and larger ones.  Anna was watching closely and after some delicate threading, I was done, though there was a final problem of tying the ends to finish the bracelet.  I asked Sarah to help out ad she tied the two ends and put the bracelet on Anna.  I started making another one for Petunia and she wanted it in black and blue.  I used larger black stones and tiny blue beads and soon had one more which Sarah needed to tie.  The problem was that Sarah’s knots were not working and Anna’s bracelet fell apart and as we tried recovering that, Petunia’s did the same and Sara said she was giving up!  I started making another one while Alisa tried fixing the other bracelets.  Fran was working with another resident and all of us were chatting about projects.  She asked Wilson if he ever rests, to which Alisa said that even God rested on the 7^th day.  To this he responded, “But I’m not God!” leading to laughter from all volunteers in the room. 

And Anna's: Post-knot

Alisa’s knots were better and soon Anna and Princes had their bracelets made.  However, there was a red bracelet which one of the residents was making and no matter who tried the final knot or how many times, it kept breaking.  Sarah in fact was referring to it as cursed!  I took couple of the pens since there were extra, though all the bracelets were gone - Anna and Petunia keeping their's; with Anna taking the other one I made as well.  I had asked Wilson if he wanted to grab dinner and while he initially said yes, he got a call for some Red Cross emergency and went there instead.  As I left Lakeview nursing, I seriously could not believe what I had done this afternoon – I had made jewelry.  Only those who know me well can attest to how outrageous that statement sounds.  But while I may be in disbelief, Anna and Petunia were grateful and that’s all that there is.

*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy