Wood as far as the eye can see

Grad school is hard. We've got tons of reading, papers due every week, and then, of course, there's shop class.

Yes, internet, I am building a wooden candle box in graduate school. Yesterday I used a handsaw and a chisel to make the dovetail joints and then I assembled it using hide glue (which smells, by the way, exactly how you'd expect: gross, and a little like warm melted cow.) Today we're going to be shellacking our boxes to bring out the "shine" of the walnut wood.

Apparently this craft project is supposed to help us understand the experience of the 18th century cabinetmaker and appreciate the material goods they produced in a more hands-on fashion. I'm so busy being inordinately proud of my kind of sloppy dovetails, though, that I don't think I'm going to be able to focus on anything else.

Shoshana, Master Cabinetmaker! Just rolls of the tongue, right?

P.S. I'm in graduate school. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this earlier, but if not - yeah. Graduate school! Can't believe they were crazy enough to let me in, but they can't take it back now.