Teenage Boys

Graham had his good friends Aaron and Zac sleep over last night (the alpha and the omega, I now realize). Steve and I took the three of them out to dinner at the neighborhood Chinese food buffet, and then we went home. They saw the needle felting I had done the night before on the kitchen table and seemed really interested. After a few, "that would be really interesting's," and "that looks fun's," and "I'd like to try that some time's," they just came out and asked if they could give it a go. Luckily, I had purchased a set of five felting needles, so there was plenty to go around. I didn't have felting blocks for all of them, so they worked on folded bath towels.

All three of these 13-year-old's were eager students and sat and worked diligently at their projects. They picked the most daring colors I had, all the while saying things like, "This is super fun," "I am going to ask my mom to get me supplies for Christmas," and my favorite (a jaw-dropper): "This is more fun than video games." "Yeah," another one said, "video games are starting to get boring." One more time. A thirteen-year-old boy said, "Video games are starting to get boring." Victory!

Graham's ball is on the right -- he wanted to make his very random (so it has lots of different colors on it.) He had fun picking his favorite colors from the ones I had (brights and darks). Aaron's block stack is in the middle (it's all felted together as one piece). I think it looks very Asian-influenced, almost sushi-like. His felting is very tight and compact, and his use of color was really nice. Zac wanted to make his mom a bird like the one I made the day before. "I never get her anything for Christmas," he said. He was only part-way done last night when I went to bed, and this morning I saw he had stuck at it until he finished. I asked him if I could take it to work to take a picture, and he said, "You can, but it didn't turn out very well." I told him I thought it was wonderful. How tickled would you be if a 13-year-old boy in braces made you a needle felted bird for Christmas?

Aaron's birthday is coming up in January, and I think I know what we'll get him. You never know how someone will react to a new craft. And I had never even thought about showing these boys how to cross stitch. I've never thought they'd take to that, but now I'm not so sure. Life is full of surprises.