Marathon sock monkey workshop.

Friday July 30th saw the kick off of our new workshop programme. We had an amazing time making sock monkeys and were so pleased with the amount of people who signed up for the workshop (we had entire families!)the standard of work was incredible. Its criminal that such scant attention is paid to textiles and sewing in schools as these children concentrated for over 3 hours doing a combination of machine and hand sewing.



Our youngest sewer was just 5 and he also happened to finish first, although he did have a very small pair of socks.



At first AP and I thought that we may have done a wrong thing and taken on too much. We thought that having parents along would mean that they would help with the more tricky activity of sewing on machines. Not so, as some of the parents turned into Nigel Mansell and over enthusiastically proceeded to snarl up the machines with great gobs of thread.




No-one lost their temper or their fingers and everyone went home really happy with a completed project. Which is so satisfying.




The children were so excited as a photographer for the local paper came up. The Chronicle and Echo are planning a feature for next week, so hopefully they will use the photo of the whole group with their monkeys.



When I got home I felt like I'd been caught in a bombing raid, I was a bit stunned by the massive amount of activity and instruction. Luckily AP was there throughout with her wonderful calm outlook and unflapperble-ness.

There are times when I know I couldn't wish for a better job. Yesterday was one of those days.