French Kissin (in the USA)

Remember that song? Well before Christmas I did French Knitting (in Chanthaburi), Doesn't have quite the same ring to it does it?

Mr John reckons that Art is his weakest subject and he definitely has issues with the hands on stuff. I've seen the results of his art lessons though through pictures of some of the kids work and I've seen some amazing artwork. I think that because he knows its his weakness subject he puts more effort into it and actually does a really good job.  I also suspect he used this excuse to get me out of the house.

So Art is a double lesson (100 minutes) on Friday afternoons. Weirdly, we'd been saving the cardboard tubes from out of our toilet paper rolls and it was time to use them. I got all the kids to make a "dolly" and then got them knitting. I even got Mr John's teaching assistant and Thai teacher involved by giving them a ready made dolly each and a ball of wool. I must say they really got into the spirit of the thing and seemed to enjoy themselves.


I've got to say, I was exhausted when we'd finished. I don't know how he does it everyday. There's 39 in the class and it took all four of us "grown ups" to wander round helping them out. Fixing loops that fell off sticks, undoing knots and various other issues that I didn't think were possible! 

I perhaps shouldn't have started with making the "dolly". It took absolutely ages and one young chap has some very thick paper which resulted in Mr John having to salvage the whole thing. There were varying balls of wool both in thickness and colour and when all else failed on finding something positive to say to each child, I resorted to complementing them on their choice of wool.

Although tiring, I did have a lot of fun and it did me the world of good. They're a great bunch of kids and see why Mr John is so happy here (even with the occasional grumble).

Look out for my detailed post on how to French Knit, coming soon.