I am all about the chicken

Another book I scored in Shenzhen is Adorable Sock Dolls to Make & Love, picked up ostensibly because, “My sock puppets never looked that good.” Neil put up with my ooh’ing and aah’ing over the baby buddies, farmyard chicken, and moose all weekend (the baby rabbits look like peanut M&Ms with ears, and are cute in their own dismembered way).

You wouldn’t know it to look a me these days, but I was quite crafty in my Before-I-Discovered-I-Was-Deathly-Allergic-To-Glue time. One of my favourite books at my grandfather’s was a Fifties publication of activities and things to make for boys (I think I’ve mentioned this book in an old post that has since been assigned to languish in my private archives). I was itching to make myself a soapbox racer and terrorise the neighbourhood, but Singapore doesn’t make soapboxes easily available to seven-year old children (hell, they don’t make soapboxes easily available to grown adults, but that’s another post).

I made a castle out of cardboard once. It kind of fell apart after a day or so, since I used the wrong kind of cardboard, but the sense of achievement is still keenly felt.

I knitted (a little), I crocheted, I cross-stitched, I hooked rugs, I made paper flowers (this was a forced project at school, but I came to like it), I made friendship bracelets out of embroidery thread, I did all sorts of things known as ‘handicraft’. And those sock puppets made of outgrown school socks, of course.

(Sewing for Home Economics is an entirely different matter. It’s not craft, it’s Torture for the Clumsy.)

These days, I consider myself crafty if I hand write a postcard.

So, I’d like to revive my old penchant for making stuff and try to make sock dolls. I, however, have a few questions.

1. What the fuck is carpet thread?
2. If I can’t find carpet thread, what is a reasonable alternative?
3. Will I have a hope in hell of finding normal looking socks (crew and ankle in different colours, in varying sizes) in Xiamen, and not those thin nylon pieces of crap they sell in most places?