Daddy had a long list of really fabulous sayings.   When I’m feeling blue and missing his presence on this earth, I will sometimes run through them in my mind.  I almost always end up smiling through my tears.  One of his favorites was about making a silk purse from a sow’s ear.  Now…for those of my dear readers who have never heard of this before or who have heard it but never known quite what it meant, here it is explained:  when the situation looks bad, make something good out of it.  It’s the whole lemonade from lemons thing.  In other words, quit whining, and work with the hand you’re dealt.  I’m SO on board with the dealt hand thing, but I’m not about to give up my whining.  I enjoy it too much.  🙂

I don’t know if it was my daddy’s saying or genetics or a combination of the two, but I’ve always been able to see the potential in a  mistake or a mess or an “Oops!” moment.  My brain is really good at filling in the gaps.  I can walk into a house that’s a total disaster from an interior decorator’s standpoint and see what could be.  My dh, on the other hand, only sees what is right in front of him.  In the case of a house we looked at to buy years and years ago, the master vanity had one bright red oval sink and one dark green oval sink side by side.  I wondered at the time if the previous owners had been really enamored with Christmas, or were they just color blind?  LOL  Regardless, we didn’t buy the house mainly because my dh didn’t like the sink colors.   In hindsight, I’m very glad.  The house we did buy was new construction, and we loved it for the time we were in it.  But I digress!  Sorry.  I did mention that I’m easily distracted in a previous post, right?  🙂

A recent “sow’s ear” moment provided an opportunity for creativity.  While carving and sanding down a female action figure’s molded eyebrow ridges, I accidentally nicked with my x-acto knife the lower lid sculpt of one of the eye sockets.  It was one of those moments where I just had to suck in a huge breath and then release it in a ragged sigh.  There was no one to blame but myself.  And truthfully, no one but myself would have ever noticed the miniscule nick had I just proceeded with the repaint.  But to MY eyes, the almost imperceptible nick was a gaping maw.  I was faced with two choices…paint and pretend the nick didn’t exist or paint and enlarge and enhance the tiny nick until it was a jagged scar of a battle wound.  Hmmmm….let’s see…as an artist and a perfectionist, the choice was for me not really a choice at all.  Which route do you think I took?  If you’ve seen my most recent repaint “Ivannah”, you know the answer.  Et voila!  Silk purse.  My daddy would be proud.