Braidwork Journey

Early Braided Bridle

Early Braided Bridle

early Braided Bridle

Anna Tackett's Revamped Bridle

Blue N Black Bridle Owned by Susan Bensema Young

Model HOrser Anonymous donation owned By Robin Smith

Model HOrses Anonymous Bridle Owned By Robin Smith

Nan Donation Collaboration between myself and Susan Bensema Young

Today, I decided to Teach my Son how to do knots.  I realized as I looked at his eye hand co-ordination and his lack of ability to make things with his hands, that his school no longer teaches art and crafts.  Most schools don't. Budget cuts I suppose.  He also doesn't like to "color" (I would color for hours at his age).  His brain is like mine and that is a WHOLE LOT Of sitting around for long periods of time focusing on one thing for our brains.  Coloring is a monumental task for him.  I've learned to focus my ever busy brain by making things with my hands, or drawing.  He doesn't have that luxury... yet.

I also find that he spends a lot of time on his Ipad and reading. But we don't do a lot together. I want to change all of this and mentor him in engineering things with his hands.  I think this is a valuable life skill.

I realized as I was teaching him the spanish ring knot of three passes that:

1. I broke up the whole knot into parts and only moved onto another part when I had the first part down.  That seemed to help him.

2. I taught myself to do knots when I was in my 30s... so he'll have a jump on me.

3. I am teaching him much more than knots. I'm teaching eye hand co-ordination,  focus, dealing with frustration (he was in tears due to frustration but we worked through it) and perserverence.

4. I love spending time with him like that. No Tv. NO music, just talking and learning.

Just now, I asked him to do the first part that we learned today- and he did it in seconds. He was SO PROUD Of himself!  He even asked to learn more tomorrow. :)

I'm hoping that in the future he'll want to do more knots and maybe I'll learn some new ones on the way too..