Middle School Ren Faire

Today, my younger son's school held a Renaissance Faire (for seventh grade only) and I went, thinking it wouldn't be much. I was pleasantly surprised! There were many activities for the kids, lasting the entire school day -- face painting, wheat weaving, an INCREDIBLE collection of armor, horses, a blacksmith, and that's just what I was able to see, coming in and going out.

I demoed netting. I even managed to finish TWO small projects -- a small bag for onions/potatoes in the fridge (thanx for the idea, Tony!), and a small sample of square mesh netting, both made of cotton twine. Here are the pictures of the projects -- yes, I forgot my camera again, so no pics of the actual event, just pics the finished items taken at home...

I made the opening in this bag a bit too small for some of the HUGE onions I see at my grocery store, so I'll have to make another bag for that use, as well as one for potatoes. This one will work well for displays, however (shown here with table-tennis balls). I'm going to try to find some plastic onions/potatoes to show in this bag for demo purposes -- much more portable and less perishable than the real thing, for displays...

This piece of square-mesh netting is a actually combination of netting and tatting. After I finished making the net, I made 20 split-chain stitches (okay, you nautical folks may call it ring hitching, if you must, but it was made using a sort of 'indirect method') around the extra mesh 'loops' at each of the corners.

I would like to use this as part of my demo display, too, but can't think of anything to put in it for display purposes. Any suggestions?

Oh, btw, on the subject of netting, I recently found out that I'm a netting 'Grandma' -- my first netting student has taught other(s) how to net! It's a great feeling, considering that I wasn't even sure I was ready to teach netting, at the time! But actually, some students just learn so well, they make the teacher look good! : - )