05 October 2012

toddler sewing basket - cable ties

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the other day i mentioned cable (or zip) ties. now some of you might be thinking um kat? cable ties in a toddler's sewing basket? i know! here is what happened:

in many toddler activities i had noticed the presence of pipe cleaners. the sweet tots string things upon them, weave them onto other things, & poke them through still other things. the last was my worry.

elfling does enjoy poking. he also enjoys quickly finding more mischievous uses for things. sure, poking a long fuzzy thing, with a sharp pokey bit at either end, into a colander/strainer/etc is great fun for a few seconds. but why do that when there are eyes/brothers/etc within poking distance? exactly.

recently manlyman asked me to buy him a pack of cable ties, only the ones i bought were the wrong size, so i tossed them into the studio, & promptly forgot about them. a few days later i saw them & had an epiphany - cable ties in place of pipe cleaners! oh the cleverness of me.


here you can see the cable ties woven into the acorn thingamajig.


& here they are poked into the acorn thing. a colander does work, much better in fact, but i was too lazy to get ours.


here you can see using a cable tie to strengthen a stack of spools & wheels.


& more of the same.


here the spools & wheels are strung onto the tie, & other ties are poked into the wooden bits.


we lucked out in that the bag in which the cable ties came is a resealable one. another activity!


it took elfling nearly as long to put each tie into the bag, as it took to play with everything. i am going to enjoy this while it lasts, as i am sure he'll eventually realize he can shove in many at a time.

so that is the why & how of it. weaving, poking, stringing; it's all a first step in mastering the skills needed to sew. sans bloody brothers & missing eyeballs.

~peace.

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