November, 2012
As Far As I'm Concerned, I'm Delightful
Arts and crafts. Oy.
The old crafts are actually the best ones. They teach fine manipulation, pattern recognition, and other skills.
So here we are at Bar Harbor, with Tupperware containers full of dried pasta in a dozen shapes and small bottles of glue scattered about the tables, and an empty metal coffee can in front of each child. We were making macaroni covered cans, AKA pencil holders, to be given out for Christmas or Hanukkah. (There would be another gift the next week, a velvet covered Styrofoam block with trim and rickrack glued on it; add thumbtacks and a pencil glued to a piece of yarn and voila: a message center.)
Some of the pasta had soaked in food dye for several hours the day before; others had been spray painted gold or silver. The kids were in charge of what went where; we were just there to assist.
Earlier that day we had covered the cans in plain gift wrap: green, red, purple or blue, according to the request of the kid in question. (It's much easier to glue macaroni to paper than metal.)
The spray painted pasta was more popular than the dyed ones, roughly a 5 to 1 ratio. And there was plenty of glitter to be thrown on top. They were interesting, for sure.
"Nothing like gilded macaroni," Tezra, another volunteer mom, said. We were carefully arranging the cans on a waist high counter, well above inquiring toddlers' reach.
I stopped and cocked my head. "Am I bananas or does gilded macaroni sound like a pretentious pasta restaurant?"
Tezra continued to stare at the can in her hand. It was covered in gold bow tie pasta, which was in turn drenched in gold glitter. "Gilded macaroni…" she murmured.
I may have just witnessed the birth of a new food trend.