Hide all the knives…

…’cause baby’s insane…

Actually, more because baby’s clumsy.

So, I was doing a bit of late night rearranging in Maqlu Central. Candles lit, listening to some music from my iTunes, a blend of Jakalope, Faderhead, Raggedy Angry, Danko Jones, Marilyn Manson etc.

I remembered having a couple of strips of black leather kicking around that aren’t really a useful shape for any sewing projects and wondered if maybe I could use them to solve the pseudo-problem of a boring mic stand. Going to retrieve them I noticed that one already had a hole near the top and the second didn’t.

Now, I have a pair of fabric shears in the other room, but I had a sharpened ceremonial dagger laying around looking pretty right here. Which do you figure I chose to use?

Yep, that’s right, the non-safe option: the dagger.

In an instant the second piece of leather had a hole and my left middle finger had a gash.

Oops.

I remembered that the last time I had such an injury it was back when I worked at IKEA years ago courtesy of a box cutter and I simply ran icy cold water over it and by the time my coworkers dug up a band-aid the bleeding had stopped, so off to the bathroom after snuffing out the candles. At least this time it wasn’t a cut through my fingernail like when box cutter met thumb.

Anyway, all bandaged up and as I’m dutifully applying pressure for 15 minutes (as per what I recall from some first aid class I took in high school) it occurs to me I can now honestly say I started off 2011 bleeding for my art.

Well, I could if it weren’t such a terrible cliche.

And in the end the jury’s still out on whether the mic stand looks any cooler with the black leather strips tied to it or not.