Adventures in Learning, 2

I admire my grandfather.

Also, I admire any of you out there who have that same skill set: being able to fix nearly anything.

And, you ask, what exactly does this have to do with learning?

Well. Front lines, folks: hands on learning. It's clearly the winner for accelerated learning in the classroom, so I'm hoping for similar results with my ventures into home repair and crafting.

Today's adventure? Restoring a 1950s aluminum lawn chair's graceful sleek silver lines, that I remember from my childhood. (uh, not that I was alive in the 1950s, but the chair certainly was around then.)

First things first: steel wool and lots of scrubbing. To my utter amazement, this accomplished nearly all of the work! Here I've been using this chair for years, wishing it didn't have so much rust obscuring its beautiful lines--and THIS is all that was needed to restore it?!

There's most definitely a lesson in there somewhere. I suspect it will also be a humbling experience, so I'm gonna save that one to think about later on in the day.

What else did I learn?

Fixing stuff gets a lot of gunk under fingernails. Yuck. It's all good, though, thanks to the miracle of soap and water. (Yep, I know already. Don't bother to tell me to wear gloves. Gloves are unwieldy and make it much harder to do detail work, at least at my current level of skill.)

In any case, now the chair is nearly clear. Next step--read and ask about how to bring it fully alive again.

(BTW, if you're reading this, thinking "How can she not know to do xyz?!"---please, don't keep that knowledge to yourself--put it in the comments, where it will be most welcome!) (and put to good use!)

Coming up tomorrow....hanging an outdoor clothesline that doesn't sag to the ground after one use. See you then!

-K