Piano Benches Are like Treasure Chests!

You can find all kinds of amazing forgotten things in piano benches!

I mean, you really don't think of a piano bench as being anything more than a place to rest your rump. That is what a piano bench is.

BUT...

Did you know that they open? ... I always forget. Except when I am changing guitar strings, because that is where I keep my winder, and where I stash my old strings.

Sometimes, I am not sure when or how, my piano bench swallows an odd but wonderfully curious item here or there. On the exceptionally rare occasion that I actually look and see what is in my bench, it is like my birthday, Christmas, and Election Day all in one! I am finding new and exciting stuff with an occasional handout to someone else. Everyone has to come in an check the ongoing results before returning to their previous activity.

Well, I was looking for new distractions today, and while I was doing so, my guitar caught my eye. I picked it up and strummed a few chords, realized that my stings are quite dull, set my guitar down, and then had an AH-HA moment... I have years worth of old guitar strings in my piano bench! I should DO something with them!

My guitar strings are very much like my CDs in the fact that there is something about them that I find... well... to put it simply... I find them hoardable. Their captivating quality isn't as readily apparent as CDs. They don't reflect rainbows, in fact, they are quite dull and tarnished. Although they are quite circular when I have the coiled, they are rather tangled and kinky when I uncoil them... Maybe it is the shiny brass bead on the end, I do like the bead on the end...

I don't know why I love them, but I love them enough to keep 15 years' worth of them, tightly coiled, in sets, in my piano bench, for 15 years.

Anyways, back to my AH-HA moment... I have a lot of guitar strings... and I didn't know what to do with them. I decided I would figure something out.

I used to coil them up and wear them as fashion accessories as a teenager. They also looked cool coiled around my rear-view mirror... I was thinking about that when I got to what was under my coiled strings... I happened to find a few old macrame projects that I had been experimenting with long ago when I got it in my head it was a good idea to make my own guitar strap.

... I also found an old dragon pendant, some old sound track tapes that I used to use when I sang specials in church, a pair of sunglasses, a golf ball, a couple Hot Wheels, a Glade plug-in (that is useless because they don't sell those scented cartridges anymore), some old chapstick (that was no longer chapstick), a bag of foreign coins, and some other miscellany.

After enjoying the Hotwheels for a couple minutes, and then memorizing the last time I would ever smell Glade Rainshower scent (which didn't smell quite like I remembered), I returned to my strings and macrame...

And then the other part of my AH-HA moment, when I thought, HEY! Macrame is made with strings!... Guitar strings are made of ... WIRE... which is like strings because they are long, and thin, and stuff...

And so, now I am making cool decorative knots with my guitar string. I also made some coiled rings and bracelets. My fingers are sore, but I am pretty proud of myself.

I now have a couple types of upcycled items to list on Etsy, if I can just do it.