Misadventure!!!
Today I had a fun and challenging project to tackle:
To give you the back story - Goro, my friend and accompanist, broke his wrist several weeks ago. As you might imagine, I've had several reasons to be concerned about his recovery. . .
The doctor has given him the go-ahead for playing - as long as he doesn't do anything that hurts, like move his wrist around too much. The trouble is that the splint that they had given him was made for just after the surgery when he was not able to move his fingers or thumb around very much. The problem? Well, it's pretty hard to play the piano when you can't move your wrist, but damn near impossible when you can't move your thumb!
We got to talking about how the brace could be improved by removing the thumb piece - but of course, you don't want to mess with the brace that you wear for everyday activities just to play a few hours a day. We started talking about the perfect brace for playing piano at this stage in his healing. It would need to immobilize the wrist from motion while allowing the fingers full range of motion. I started talking about the different ways you could go about achieving that, when the familiar but reckless creative crafting demon inside me suddenly decided to take over my body and use it for its own designs.
"I can make that," I was suddenly compelled to say.
The rational side of me was like "You can't be serious - a brace for a BROKEN WRIST?? Are you out of your mind??!!"
But the crafty side somehow won the argument with "Oh, come on. How hard could it be?"
So Goro and I went to Johann's Fabrics and Lowe's to pick up a sturdy fabric, some Velcro, and some sort of material for the brace part that needed to be firm but somewhat flexible so we could mold it to his hand. After spending 30 or 40 minutes wandering around Lowe's, we finally realized that the best material was probably just really firm cardboard - which we could totally get for free. So we got some. And I was able to successfully mold it into a very firm board to support the wrist.
I'll spare you all the boring details of how I put it together - but here are some shots of what he already had compared with what I made for him.
Here is the brace from the doctor - notice the immobile thumb:
Here is my version. And for all of you who may be freaking out about this idea, this is only an aid to helping him to stop from accidentally moving the wrist too far while playing gigs and such forth. Sure beats the alternative of not playing with a brace at all. . . but I do not recommend this for general life purposes!
Click on this pic to see the cool red stitching!
So there you have it. I must say, I really surprised myself with this one!
Today I had a fun and challenging project to tackle:
To give you the back story - Goro, my friend and accompanist, broke his wrist several weeks ago. As you might imagine, I've had several reasons to be concerned about his recovery. . .
The doctor has given him the go-ahead for playing - as long as he doesn't do anything that hurts, like move his wrist around too much. The trouble is that the splint that they had given him was made for just after the surgery when he was not able to move his fingers or thumb around very much. The problem? Well, it's pretty hard to play the piano when you can't move your wrist, but damn near impossible when you can't move your thumb!
We got to talking about how the brace could be improved by removing the thumb piece - but of course, you don't want to mess with the brace that you wear for everyday activities just to play a few hours a day. We started talking about the perfect brace for playing piano at this stage in his healing. It would need to immobilize the wrist from motion while allowing the fingers full range of motion. I started talking about the different ways you could go about achieving that, when the familiar but reckless creative crafting demon inside me suddenly decided to take over my body and use it for its own designs.
"I can make that," I was suddenly compelled to say.
The rational side of me was like "You can't be serious - a brace for a BROKEN WRIST?? Are you out of your mind??!!"
But the crafty side somehow won the argument with "Oh, come on. How hard could it be?"
So Goro and I went to Johann's Fabrics and Lowe's to pick up a sturdy fabric, some Velcro, and some sort of material for the brace part that needed to be firm but somewhat flexible so we could mold it to his hand. After spending 30 or 40 minutes wandering around Lowe's, we finally realized that the best material was probably just really firm cardboard - which we could totally get for free. So we got some. And I was able to successfully mold it into a very firm board to support the wrist.
I'll spare you all the boring details of how I put it together - but here are some shots of what he already had compared with what I made for him.
Here is the brace from the doctor - notice the immobile thumb:
Here is my version. And for all of you who may be freaking out about this idea, this is only an aid to helping him to stop from accidentally moving the wrist too far while playing gigs and such forth. Sure beats the alternative of not playing with a brace at all. . . but I do not recommend this for general life purposes!
Click on this pic to see the cool red stitching!
Thanks Apkiwa, you're the best! Goro
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