I cannot believe that I've just spent over 9 hours in the shop yesterday. I've been working on one of my final pieces for my fd. 3d class which we had to make something with 3 legs. If it's functional it's furniture, if it's not, it's a sculpture...or that's how the teacher worded it I think. For my project I wanted to make a bookshelf to fit my manga collection in (or at least, some of it) so it's a 4 ft bookshelf sized just for manga sized books. It fits an oversized manga perfectly with an inch above for breathing room, so the regular sized manga will fit for sure. This is the only project that I've done that Dee Jay has given me the ok right off the bat to go for. The other 2 that I've done he's told me right off the bat were too hard for me. Progress has been going at a snail's pace for the longest, because I kept having to stop to make sure I had enough supplies to finish the work and of course there was alot of planning involved so far as measurements go and stuff like that. I just don't want to screw up the cuts I need and stuff. It'd be stupid to waste money that way.

For awhile though, the thing was just a bunch of planks of wood loosely screwed in. I had just a frame of what it was supposed to look like. Yesterday though, I got all the cuts for the shelves done, hammered all the shelves in, pre-drilled, screwed in the shelves to the bookshelf, wood puttied all the screws and the 2 inch gaps for the shelves (the shelf width is 8 inches, but the frame itself is 10, so I had a 2 inch gap that I didn't want on all of the shelves) and started chiseling the notches I needed for the biggest part of the bookshelf itself: the Shinto shrine that's going to be attached to the front of the shelf. The legs of the shrine are going to serve as 2 of the 3 feet for the project and Dee Jay screwed in a piece of wood to the back of the base for my 3rd leg.

We were laying it out yesterday on a table while we got the measurements for the chiseling. I gotta say, I'm reeeally excited about this one. this thing with the shrine stands at over 80 inches tall, and I'm making the biggest in the class. I can't take all the credit though, Dee Jay has helped me out immeasurably and I'm positive that without his help, I would've had to drop out of this class or failed it a long time ago. I hit a really nasty slow snag in the project when it came to chiseling and it made me feel really bad that Dee Jay has had to come straight from work to help me on this. I actually feel really bad that he's had to help me in all of my projects though too. I mean don't get me wrong, I really appreciate all that he's done for me, but it does suck donkeys on ice that I can't just go at it with no experience like my drawing classmate Kadja or Sam or Moose or Keith or Amber...alot of those people are at the same standing as I am and are going to be persuing different majors like graphic design and and animation and stuff too, but they get it. And I just...don't. It's been a really hard time for me in this class, because I really hoped that I would've liked this class enough to learn more about sculpture or furniture design. I love the notion of being able to look at your place and be like, I need a new dining table. Some chairs would be nice too. Ooh, this would be a neat idea for a sofa.

And you can just go out and MAKE them.

Unfortunately, I've not been granted the intelligence level to be left alone with a power tool of any kind. And the moment I'm stuck in a corner I have to run for help. And I'm SOO slow at everything. Dee Jay had said that whenever we buy a house, we're going to get a fixer-upper so we can customize it how we want to. After this class I told him he's going to have to do that on his own. I laughed at it (kinda) but I'm only half kidding. While I'm really proud of this piece, I'm really disappointed with the work I've produced in the class up till now and this sort of work has really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Sorry about the rant...I'm moody I guess. It could also be that it's 6am, I've been up since about 4, and I have to be back in the shop at around 8.

*Breathes deeply*

whoo-sha....