Middle Aged Memories

Elimar....don't remember the name of it....but I can just about picture it in my head (not the name, the braider thingy)....

Since no one knows, we'll have to call it Mystery Braid-maker.  It actually made a yarn rope that was hollow in the center.  I think I made a yarn belt once...didn't have to be too ambitious, back then, to make the length to fit around a ten-year-old's waistline. 

Did anyone make latch-hook rugs?  That had the nylon/plastic backing that the yarn latched on to.  I had something else that I liked even more...it was a hand-held yarn punch that could be used on stretched burlap to make a loop rug.  I made one with sunflowers that lasted over 20 years.

Applehead dolls.

OMG.....I made macrame until my fingers bled.  Now that one brings back memories.

I also has a punch needle, but it was sized for embroidery thread, so I used it in my embroidery.

I was just thinking of those things as I read about the wool braiding. My Grandmother made me one from an actual spool and nails She gave me some pale blue yarn/wool and a needle with a hook on it. Because the spool was so narrow, there wasn't a hollow middle, I had yards and yard of the pale blue "garden snake" type thing. My grandmother also crochets really cute stylized dogs and octopus with stryafoam dballs somehow wrapped in the wool for the head. She was a very neat lady !

Oh I loved my Spirograph!  I put those designs all over my (homemade) book covers!  Remember making book covers out of brown paper bags??  And taking your lunch in a paper bag?  No fancy lunch boxes for us--mom wouldn't spend the money.  Sometimes when we ran out of paper lunch bags, my mother would put my lunch in a used plastic bread bag!  Oh, the humiliation and shame.  hehehe

I loved Lite Brite. I really thought I was an artist. After all, i was able to create a picture with pegs and a light bulb! lol!

My mother belonged to a craft club. A little craft project would come thru the mail and she would put it together. The only one I remember is a little wheel barrel that had fake flowers in it. When I was young, she had plastic fruit. She stuck a straight pin in a color coordinated bead and then attatched it to the fruit.

I still have my Spirograph.  I had one favorite wheel #52 I think.  I used it almost exclusively.

yep....and how about tissue paper flowers ? for my older sister's sweet 16, money was tight so my Dad let her paint the garage pink and decorate it with hundreds of pink tissue paper flowers.

as for ash trays, wasn't it just recently that kindergarteners stopped making ashtrays from hand prints...or was it longer ago than it seems ?

Didn't like Lite Bright though cause we had to use a new black piece of paper every time. Not certain if I was a young conservationist or just too inept at art to want to go thru that much paper but looking back, I was a an odd child.

How about paper macheing balloons then popping them when everything dried and being left with a sphere of paper mache ? What were we supposed to do with them ?

The ex and I lived in PA many years ago and we couldn't find a pinata for our sons birthday. I took a punching pall and covered it in newspaper strips soaked in flour and water. I added cardboard ears and painted it to look like Mickey Mouse. It took days, in the oven, to dry and a whole lot of candy and peanuts to fill! When it came time to break it open, it took one of the older kids to beat the crap out of it because the walls were so thick. Good times!

I remember the starch string baskets!

My son made me a suga egg one time, but I have never attempted it.

Remember blowing the inside of an egg out through a pin sized hole? Talk about sore cheeks.