I love rituals.
It's true. I love pipe smoking because you have to sit down, select a pipe, select a tobacco, roll the tobacco through your fingers and thumb, pack the bowl well, light, tamp, light and smoke slowly.
Any drink that involves measuring, mixing, shaking in a shaker and serving with ice is fine by me, too.
I could easily be attracted to heroin. Not for the rush, but for the whole water, spoon, candle, cotton ball, tying off etc. thing. *shudders*. Thank God for my innate common sense.
A long time ago when I worked sort of in a tattoo parlour, I loved soldering needles to bars. You took out a selection of needles from a box of medical supplies, checked em with a loupe for hooks or barbs, and then put them in a jig, and soldered them gently, with a delicate touch, in specialised groupings onto a needle arm. It was the kind of patient, delicate preparatory work I love. And it was the kind of busywork that the artist hated. Most people buy disposable needle arms with pre-soldered needles, so the whole trip of making them and sterilising them is a dying art.
I bought a huge bolt of canvas, some lumber, and stretcher bars, as well as gesso and marble dust. Once I've done some more paintings, I'll gesso three canvases I made with my own hands.
I've tried something ghetto: heavyweight canvas dropcloth from Home Depot, attached to $1.25 stretcher bars, cheaply made bars that slot together into a rectangular frame. That, combined with a staple gun and canvas pliers, enables you to convert spare wood and canvas dropcloth into a heavyweight, drum-tight surface to paint on.
And for the final act, I converted some wood into an eight foot by 44" frame with a miter box and some screws. I bought a bolt of canvas eight and a half feet long, 48" tall. I will have made an enormous canvas costing more than $100 for perhaps $40. And I've found with my strength and my patience, not only do I have a nicer, tauter surface, but better canvas and stronger support.
I'm a red ass hair away from grinding my own pigment with a mortar and pestle into a walnut oil binder.