The least appreciated toy in the world

May 30, 2012 by Jana 15 Comments

My son is getting to that age where toys that are just for grabbing (no matter how many cool textures or grabbable bits they’ve got on them) are just not interesting anymore. I figured he might like a toy that did something. Nothing fancy, of course, as he’s only 10 months old, but he was definitely getting bored of the same old same old in our toy bins, and he was happily attempting to make toys out of all sorts of other things that shouldn’t be toys — The garbage can! The toilet! The houseplants! Oh, the grubby grossness of it all. A busy little explorer needs things to do, you know. And the grosser, the better.

So I went about making him something un-gross to play with. I sewed up some stuffed fabric ‘beads’ (uh, they’re square? yes.) that attached to each other with velcro. Something to stick together and pull apart. I got the idea from Green Valley Crafts. It was so simple! I had the stuff! I even hand-stitched them all closed after I stuffed them, like a boss.

I was able to use some of my favourite fabric scraps in the process (some of which I received as part of my Ravelry group’s swap earlier this year), which made for a bright and sunny set of colours. I noticed after I made them that there are three yellowish/orange-ish ones and three blue ones. That was completely by accident but I love the end result!

Here they are all un-stuck. Please ignore my lopsided velcro placement. Mamas who sew are also mamas who are in a hurry to finish up sewing because they have CrazyBaby trying to chew the power cord off the sewing machine. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But only a little.

And so what did my son think? Unfortunately, his verdict was decidedly “BOOOORING!” I think the sound of the ripping velcro (when I showed him how they worked) actually gave him a small fright. So he was less-than-impressed. How sad!

I had to bribe him to pose with the reject toy by giving him his “chewy.” So he’ll play near the thing but not with the thing. Sigh.

But it’s still a sweet-looking little toy. And fits perfectly in our mini Radio Flyer.

Maybe he’ll warm up to it.