h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And you hated/loved making it.

What did you usually make?

Did your parents 'helped' you?

And you hated/loved making it. Liked it

What did you usually make? models - Boats and figures. Enamel work and woodwork.

Did your parents 'helped' you? No

I tended to make papier mache. My mom showed me how to work the oven so the flour and water would thicken properly as a paste. We put some mint extract in the mixture to give it a nice smell. I made some kind of animal -- horse? dinosaur? Another time I made a landscape complete with a volcano. I painted my projects, but I don't remember what kind of paint I used.

differnt at differn ages... I used to love it; still sometimes sort of do some craft stuff now, very much an adult

I really loved making balsa wood moddles in particular; some Sci-fi type constructions, space ships, etc., etc., and wierd gothic ritualistic structures, sort of black gothing sacrifical alters, a bit fantasty sci-fi sort of stuff, - also got into wood work from that; used to love making various boxes (still have and still use a couple, some thirty years on)
Also vaguely recall doing some papier maschae (sp) to, but can't quite recall... - seem to think I made some weird 'landscape' from it; to use with lead figurines (which I used to enjoy painting).
- I also did all the useual airfix moddles, mainly second world war, but some first world war aeroplains, and a couple of cars too I seem to recall....

by the time I got a bit older, I carried on with some of the wood work, did various renivations and partial rebuilds on guitars (wo woodwork) - by then I was dappling in eletronics too, so used to fix dodgy electronics on people's/friends guitars, and repair them but that was less 'craft' I guess and by then I was ffreeping into being a teenager I guess...

Oh, and also when very young, (I'd forgot, just remembered), used to make abstract things, from dried reeds, but that was probably more art than craft and I honestly can't recall much of what I used to make there... - asides which I did some watercolour painting and pencil drawing art type things mainly pics of landscapes from the natural world around me when I was a kid living in the ocuntryside ,erm>

Same here. I do almost everything without the help of my parents
And this is what I make: http://appnaz.com/android/mantra-management-client-com.mantra.clientmanagement

I don't think we really did much I'd call 'craft'. There was some woodwork (sawing and using a glue gun, not dovetail jointing or anything fancy) in Middle School, however that was at school so I didn't take it home and my parents' didn't have the chance to help. Not that my Mum would have helped – she always regarded homework as being for us and nothing to do with her.

I went to the same school as my Dad (though not at the same time) – when he was there it was quite different – boys with surnames A-M were taught woodwork, boys with surnames were taught metal work and he's done metalwork ever since.

<BB<

That arbitrary division of pupils into woodwork/metalwork says everything you need to know about the school's attitude to those subjects and to the boys in general.

Wood shop was an overwhelmingly masculine class at my middle school. The only project I remember was a CO2 powered racecar. We're given a small block of wood and using basically just a band saw, router, and sand paper we shaped it into some semblance of a sleek, aerodynamic shape with a hole drilled into the fat end to receive the CO2 cartridge. It had required widths at the axles and a required length, but otherwise we could be creative with the shape. I made mine quite thin between the two axles to pare the weight down for speed. Another student "pretended" to give it a karate chop across this span but overextended and snapped my car in two, one day before the grading and competition. I had just finished painting it (with go fast stripes that would surely cut a further half second off my time). The shop teacher let me finish a rejected blank that someone had botched earlier. I finished last with the fattest, ugliest car in the class.

My elementary school dabbled in things - punched copper sheets for 3-D things, minor leather things like belts, wallets and wrist bands ( think 1968 ).

Automotive, wood-working, metal fabrications were not considered 'crafts' in high school. They were shops and full course credits as much as "home economics" where the basics of sewing, cooking and baking" were.

I took none of them. My father was a licensed plumber, heating contractor, electrical, carpenter, . . . And all of us from a long line of farmers that fixed anything that broke. So I didn't need school for basic life things.

In brief, I re-build or repair anything in our house.

At my secondary school, girls did needlework and home economics (cookery), boys did woodwork, metalwork, technical drawing and rural science (gardening).

At primary school I remember working with clay, making a balsa wood glider, a papier-mache piggy bank, mosaics, sewing felt, making collages. Primary school was great.

At home, I had a dolls house. I made people to live in it, clothes, curtains, bedding and furniture. I did it all without adult help, referring to books for ideas (eg a table lamp made with a toothpaste tube lid for a lampshade). This was also great.

Nowadays I mostly sew and crochet.

Mol

I hated doing knitting & sewing at school, but came to enjoy it when I wanted to make items for myself.
Being a girls' school I don't recall anything else much craft wise. Bit of a shame because I liked being creative.

However we did do pretty elaborate Christmas decorations in our classrooms. Usually involved making papier-mâché models, which I thoroughly enjoyed & made without assistance.

At Primary both boys and girls were taught how to sew - the boys made a bag to keep marbles in with various stitches incorporated - blanket, chain etc. When I joined the Navy, I was one of the few guys who could sew their own badges & insignia onto uniforms.

At High School, girls were taught cookery, housekeeping (there was a small mock flat in the school with a bed and kitchen) and something else feminine, I can't remember what. Secretarial skills?

Girls were not allowed into the Technical block where boys learned technical drawing, metalwork, woodwork and engineering science.

Metalwork & woodwork I was awful at, everything I made went in the scrap bin. Except a porridge spurtle which I was allowed to take home - basically a stick. How bizarre that I became a welder/sheetmetalworker/smith and later had a business woodcarving.

Looking back, the sexism of schools in the 70s and 80s was appalling and the inability of timetabling to allow the full scope of subjects was just incompetence (for example, you couldn't do French and Technical Drawing as the classes clashed)

I was lucky to be introduced to a range of crafts at school.

My first craft was making a out of a toilet roll innard, and my parents kept it because it is hilarious. It doesn't go on the Christmas tree these days, though.

Because I finished maths lessons quickly in primary school, I was allowed to make soft toys out of felt, and I still have the little turtle I made. In high school, we did woodwork so I made a bookcase for my favourite books (which I have also kept). I did quite a bit of work with clay, and I kept my best effort but disposed of the less good things. I also gave quite a few to my parents as gifts, so they have probably kept those somewhere.

My dad helped me with the bookcase, because my teacher unhelpfully mis-cut a part for it when he decided that it wasn't safe for me to use a saw (even though I had safely used the saw for a year before then). My mum helped me with fabric printing, when I did an overly-ambitious design and couldn't finish it at home in the time available. Otherwise, I did school stuff myself and my parents helped me learn more craft at home, including knitting and marquetry

Both my parents were incredibly good with their hands - my father made furniture - little tables with curvy legs and secretaires and sewing boxes with tiny dovetailed drawers, and my mother sewed many of our clothes and was a very neat knitter and crocheter. I am just cack-handed and am thankful that we didn't have to do much craft at school. As I've said before, I was useless at art. Last week I finally chucked out a green clay elephant I made in the 2nd form. It had lost a tusk and its trunk and I never really liked it.

I couldn't paint or draw and they let me try other things like pottery (as well as the elephant I produced an owl and some ashtrays) and calligraphy. But I still got the worst possible marks. I made sure my children learned to sew, iron and cook - they are very good at it, particularly cooking. I wasn't interested if they brought home things made of toilet rolls. I never saw the point of it.

In college, while majoring in a hobby (photography), I took Basic Design, the 101 level class for art majors. I never considered myself to have any aptitude for art, at least not drawing or painting or such. My drawing level was not much beyond stick figures.

I was fortunate and got an exceptional graduate assistant teaching this class. Many others who took it just hated it. This guy though, he'd never let you know where the project would end up. Each project would be tweeked in the following step. Our first assignment was to simply draw a square box with 4-6 lines bisecting it in any manner we felt "balanced" without being symmetrical. The next step we thicken one or two of the lines. The third step we remove a line or two. The fourth step we add color to some of the negative space. When we're done we have an interesting progression of painted squares.

Similarly, we started one project by gathering a few found objects and arranging them on a piece of art board. Then we had to do pencil drawings of this arrangement. As I struggled, the teacher looked over my shoulder and asked if I was a photo student. He said photo students inevitably start drawing the shadow areas first. He suggested that I should start with the light areas as it was easier to add darkness as I progress than to try to come back up to light. More importantly he suggested I slow wayyy down and look at each little detail of say, the piece of orange rind I had brought in. Don't draw the outline, just draw each detail, one at a time. Not what I think I see, but what I'm actually seeing.

By the end of that one class period, I was absolutely amazed that I was able to draw such a realistic image, just by slowing down and paying attention to the details.

The next step had us redoing it in India ink and then doing a "wash" over the image completely obliterating all those details I painstakingly drew. But that was OK. Without getting the details right, the abstract version wouldn't have looked as good at all.

I haven't drawn since then, but I feel that I could if I wanted and if I have the patience to slow down and just draw what I really see and not what I think I see.

It´s being very amusing and interesting to read you all.

In my small rural village school there wasn´t any craft or art lessons. However, because of living in that area crafts came naturally, as a part of the games, for instance, We made arrows and archs with branches. Not many toys either, but we managed: whistles with the pip of apricots... paste to make figures with flour, salt and water... I remember we made glue with the seeds of quinces and used to fill the locks of the school.


This year I teach, among other subjects, Arts to 9 years old. I want them to use clay. It´s very relaxing. Also I´ll ask them to do a dreamcatcher for Thanksgiving. Just to introduce a bit of native Indians culture.
Too many turkeys and pilgrims cut-outs in all the schools where I´ve been so far.

For Christmas we´ll make a tree with small decorated sticks they will find in they country. The school is in a village surrounded by lovely oak holms.

There will be sewing, may be that little turtle of SashaQ , or just sewing buttons on a cloth...

We will make a thingy I´ve named cosquillero, from cosquilla , it means cuddle. A stick with small feathers stuck and tied on one end. ( there are going to be left a lot of feathers from the dreamcatchers for sure)

Carnaval is about the History of Art, I´ve choosen Rupestrian art, we will make axes, necklaces, will paint a cave ( on a wrinkled brown paper) ...