Remember Fimo?

If you were a child in the 80s in Germany, you probably encountered Fimo. It was - still is, I suppose - a devilishly hard type of coloured clay that you can turn into solid plastic by baking. I experimented with it a bit as a teenager, but found it fairly useless. I found it nearly impossible to actually shape it into anything very detailed; the colours wouldn't mix properly; and it was very difficult to connect different parts into a whole - the parts would often fall off again after baking. So, all in all, my Fimo experience was mostly frustrating.

Turns out that it's quite possible to make amazing things from Fimo. Like this frame:

http://www.canespinnerdesigns.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=9&pos=2

(Just one example of many. Though there's a lot of really ugly stuff around, too. Sturgeon's Law applies...)

Makes me wish I had persevered. Or had some proper instruction.

One of the big frustrations of my childhood:

I always had this big urge to *make* things, but did not have access to the necessary tools and materials. My parents would shower me with art materials, actually - but they were always art materials focused on activities involving little dirt and danger. Painting and glueing stuff together, mostly. What I wanted, though, was to be able to do things that involved real tools, and materials more substantial. I really enjoyed my once-a-year chance of using the woodworking workshop of a nearby kindergarten, for example. (They opened it for the public during their annual neighbourhood party.)

I wanted to make things that did not look like something made by a child, and things that would not fall apart when you tried to use them.

Oh, yay!

I just realised: now that I know how to knit (I learned last weekend), I can ask my mother to buy me some hand-dyed yarn from etsy for my birthday! YAY!

(I've been hankering for some of that yarn since I first found it. Sadly, the batches I was particularly fond of are already sold... but there's still plenty of other beautiful stuff there. -- How many yards do you need for a decent scarf? 'cause for now, scarves are all I know how to make... *g*)