Teachers wear a lot of hats. On any given day, we might be a teacher, surrogate parent, referee, counselor, sounding board, you name it.
In my case, I’m also a repairwoman.
I used to make jewelry as a side business, and while that hustle went the way of the dodo, I still make stuff for myself on occasion. This also means I can fix the jewelry that my kids break. Just Friday, I restrung two bracelets. One had already broken, and it was the first bracelet this kiddo ever made. Easy job…I just put it on memory wire. It’s nice and sturdy, easily removable, and can fit any size wrist. I added some freshwater pearls to the ends, though. The beads were those softish plastic discs, and I wasn’t sure how well they would stand up to being flush against a sharp wire. The next hour I fixed a strand of pearls that this girl was inches from losing. It was originally strung on that multistring, clear filament. I hate that junk. Yes, it’s nice and stretchy, but once it starts to fray. that’s it. It looks awful, and there’s no fixing it once it starts to unravel, short of restringing the whole shooting match. The student was shocked that I got all of the pearls restrung within five minutes. Restringing is easy…it’s crafting a whole new pattern that might take a while.
So, what items have I fixed over the years? Here’s the ones I can think of all the top of my head:
Glasses (several)
Ceramic pendant (busted in half, then busted again. I defy it to crack a third time).
Too many necklace chains with broken/missing jump rings to count. That was the most common issue…a link breaks, the jump ring opens up, stuff like that). Easy fixes.
A backpack. Yes, I actually sewed the whole bottom of a student’s backpack so she could get a little more use out of it. That one took two hours.
Jeans. Yup .Nice big split right along the pocket. Luckily she had her gym shorts to change into until I fixed her pants.
A pin. That one was interesting. The pin part got bent (maybe stepped on), but I was able to warm the metal and bend it back into place.
Weirdest of all was a copper plated horse. A student found it in the ground on his property. This thing was covered (and filled) with dirt. Lord only knows how long that sucker had been buried. Enough metal was exposed that I could see it was copper, or copper plated. Several rounds of cleaning and polishing later, and it looked really nice. It was missing one of the legs, which looked like it had broken off at some point, and the bridle chain, which I replaced with a remnant from another jewelry project. We couldn’t figure out what this thing was until a rather intense Google search revealed its surprising origins.
This object was an old carnival prize. Best guess is that it was from the 1940’s or 1950’s. Not going to lie…it’s pretty cool to see how this kind of thing has changed over the years. Now, you get stuffed animals or other cheap junk as prizes (assuming you are skilled enough to win in the first place). File this one under ‘they don’t make them like they used to.’ Below is an image of a similar item from around the same time. I’m still pretty proud that I got that horse looking as good as I did.
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