Thursday 29 October 2015

Clever boy!


All the grandchildren are lovely, and have skills in different areas.  I ike spending time with each and very one of them.

This post, however, is about one in particular:  My (step)daughter's middle child..

He's 9 years old, and loves to learn how things work.  He likes to say back to you what he thinks you've said to him, so he can make sure he has got it right.  He's both technically minded, and artistic.

He likes coming to stay with us, and is always full of enthusiasm for anything and everything.  He loves trying my sewing machine and embroidery machine - it appeals to both his technically minded side and is creative side.

Often children are mildly interested in something, but it's a momentary thing rather than a real thirst.  I don't mind that, I just adapt how much or how little detail I go in to.

Since he last visited, I've got a new embroidery machine.  He watched me thread it, and from then on, he was able to thread it himself.  He listened when I explained the buttons and options, and he's now operating it himself.  He picks out the threads to use, and checks with me.

We started with some simple pencil toppers...
To see whether he was really understanding what he was doing, I asked him why we had to wait until the final outline stitch before putting the back on. He looked at the partially stitched design, screwed his eyes up and thought for a moment,  and then said "because we wouldn't be able to get the pencil in".

I love that.  It makes the effort worthwhile!


And now he's making a Werewolf mask. I'd bought  the design thinking it was a quick 10 minute mask, but it's actually horrendously detailed.  He's sticking with it though, and is completely in charge of making it. It's over 60,000 stitches, and the stitch time (not counting the time it takes to do all the thread changes) is over 90 minutes.   He's about a third through at the mo.








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