Me and how to entertain yourself when bored: part 2

To continue the account of some of my childhood hobbies.


A speedy and cheap activity is loo paper Papier-mâché.  First take sheets of loo paper (having checked you haven't taken the last roll in the house - you could find yourself rather unpopular) and put them in water.  Put the soggy mass on a mould e.g. egg cup.  Leave until completely dry and then it can be pulled off in one piece (well, it will come off in one piece once in every twenty goes and only if you are very, very careful).  It can be painted with very, very dry paint - anything too liquid will destroy your creation.  The resulting object will have a very short life - so don't imagine you will be making a family heirloom.


I also liked decorating things with shells that I'd collect on holiday.  I would take an empty matchbox (one of the few advantages of being the child of a couple of chain smokers is a constant supply of match boxes), glue on the shells in patterns and then present the box to a delighted (possibly slightly glazed-eyed and bored) grandmother.  Poor Nan -  her bedroom often smelt a bit odd in the weeks after receiving these gifts as I rarely checked to see if the sea creature has left its home before I wielded the glue brush.

Me and how to entertain yourself when bored: part 1

As a child there always seemed to be hours of time to fill and despite busying myself with reading Mallory Towers, playing with Barbie and writing poems I was often bored.  It was about this time that my passion for making things started.   Anyway I'll pass on a few of my childhood craft ideas in case you are suffering from ennui and need inspiration.


Then as now I have little patience for making things that don't give fairly immediate results; French Knitting was a quick win.  You need a wooden cotton reel (haven't seen one of these for a while) for the authentic Renka experience or a commercially-made knitting dolly.  Tap four small nails into the top of the reel, stuff a tail of wool through the hole - I'm getting a bit bored trying to describe this - so for excellent instructions I shall refer you to:  http://www.how-to-knit-guide.com/french-knitting.html.

Eventually a small woollen sausage will appear at the bottom of the cotton reel - if you are very impatient you can pull the tail and stretch the wool.  Keep going until you lose the will to live or you have run out of wool.  I would then sew the said sausage into hats, capes and skirts for my dolls.  Alternatively I'd sew them into circles and give them to Nan -she would (loyally) put them on her dressing table as coasters for flagons of  Oil Of Olay (aka Oil of Ugly ).

Another time-consuming activity was shoe box weaving (no - you are not weaving a shoe box - just read on).  Take the body of a shoe box, on the rims of the short-side cut shallow notches at about 1cm apart.  Knot some wool and thread it through a notch, take it to the far end and thread through the facing notch, wind around the tag (this instruction writing is obviously an art which is beyond me and a little dull) and then take it back up again.  Continue until all notches are full - you now have your warp.  You are now ready for the exciting (everything is relative) part. Take a small ruler and use it to lift up alternative warps and slide under a length of  wool to act as a weft or woof (those Anglo-Saxons really knew how to make a good word in my uttlerly biased opinion). If you vary the wool colours and don't pull it too tight you will produce a tiny magic carpet (or big if you happen to have very large feet) - warning this takes ages and ages.