On a New and Improved Thing-a-ma-jig

When we moved to Virginia, we had to leave our old thing-a-ma-jig behind and there was much crying and gnashing of teeth involved in this decision.  The kids were kind of attached to the old thing.  In case you don't know, a thing-a-ma-jig is a contraption built completely from found objects and leftover bits and pieces of this and that.  You can't have any plan in mind when you start construction, it's always a work in progress and it's never really finished.  It's all very technical.  In Florida all the wood we used had been collected by us from the river on base.  Alas, here we don't have a river right across from our house so we haven't done any thing-a-ma-jig constructing since the big move.  However, over the past few weeks Chris finally took the initiative to haul bits of this and that home that washed up out of the Potomac River at some of our favorite parks.

It's not stealing, it's free beach clean up services.

Well, long story short, a new thing-a-ma-jig has been born--this time with the added bonus of wheels thanks to a defunct lawn mower that the boys stripped for parts.  I think Chris loves working on it just as much as the boys do.  It justifies his hoarding of any part or do-dad that could ever, maybe, possibly, come in handy.  The kids love to pull it back and forth across the yard and David is desperately trying to figure out how to install some sort of engine.  Probably because he's the only one strong enough to pull it while it holds passengers.  The cousins seemed to like it too.

Who doesn't love a thing-a-ma-jig?

On Lego Pouches and Useful Crafting

I try to teach the big kids handicrafts during their lessons, but I've been having a really hard time coming up with interesting projects to work on that are actually teaching some kind of skill.  Then I had an epiphany--pouches.

I think it was the women we saw at Colonial Williamsburg with their exterior pocket pouches combined with my burning desire for the children to stop stuffing random bits of life and legos in the pockets of every pair of pants that they own (with the ensuing dumping of every pair out of the drawer in a desperate attempt to find that-which-they-cannot-live-without).  Originally I thought about little knitted pouches I had seen somewhere before but once I started looking for ideas I found this tutorial for weaving pouches and I knew I had a winner.

I took the kids to the craft store and let them each pick a couple skeins of yarn from the dollar bucket.  John wanted sparkly green yarn because he "loves it so much" and David and Henry wanted camo yarn because that's who they are.  Margaret got mostly pink because her vocabulary is limited so I had to decipher the deepest wishes of her heart for her :)

I ended up making John and Margaret's (obviously) and I ended up doing most of Henry's too because he's grumpy and a bit of a quitter (poor Henry).  But David, David wove his whole pouch on his own with a bit of help on the flap and button and sewing on the cord.  He had so much fun he's been begging to make another, even longer, pouch.  He originally said he wanted it long enough to hold his baseball bat but I think I've convinced him that that is a really bad idea.  Also I don't have cardboard long enough to make him a bat sized loom.  We'll see.

I didn't put a flap on Margaret's pouch for ease of use since the flaps are a little difficult for little hands to work as there isn't a button hole--you're just supposed to push the button through the weaving.  They really liked picking out which button they were going to use from my stash though so there might have been a revolt if I hadn't made the button flaps on the boys'.

If you're looking for a handicraft I would definitely give this a go.  It may or may not help with the legos in the pocket situation at your house.  Sadly, it hasn't made much of a difference here.

What about you?  Do you have any favorite handicrafts at your house?