September 2004

Last Saturday Genie and I planned to have a teddy bears’ picnic in my back garden. Mum had bought a teddy bear-shaped cookie cutter and helped me make biscuits and cute little teddy sandwiches. But when Genie’s mum dropped her off it was pouring with rain…

“You can always have a carpet picnic,” mum said, seeing the disappointment on our faces. So she spread the picnic rug out on the living room floor and even brought in a few of her houseplants to make it seem a bit more realistic. But it wasn’t the same.

“I know,” said mum “I’ve got just the thing for a day like this.” She started rummaging through the cupboard under the stairs, muttering “I know I put it in here somewhere” and emerged with a box.

“It’s a kit for making friendship bracelets,” she said. “I saw it at the craft shop when I was buying some needles and cottons and I knew you two would love it.”

Mum helped us sort out all the different coloured embroidery threads and read through the instructions. “It’s a bit tricky,” she said, frowning “but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.”

Well…our first attempt was a disaster! We tied knots in all the wrong places, tangled up the threads and ended up with something that looked like a badly knitted scarf for a Barbie doll!

Mum came to the rescue. I held the ends while she showed us how to plait the threads and knot them off and soon the first bracelet was finished. The kit came with two little heart-shaped charms. One said ‘best’ and the other said ‘friend’ so we made another identical bracelet and threaded on the charms.

“Now you’ve got special bracelets to show you’re best friends,” mum said.

There were plenty of threads left over and Genie suggested we make more bracelets for the rest of our friends – but not special ones with charms like ours.

So we set to work and spent all afternoon plaiting and knotting. It made our fingers a bit sore and Wizzie kept trying to play tug-of-war with the threads as we pulled them out to separate all the colours.

But by teatime we’d made quite a few bracelets and couldn’t wait to give them out at school on Monday. Then Genie said; “We could make some for the boys too. David Beckham always wears bracelets and we could do them in the colours of their favourite football teams.”

What a fab idea! But wait a minute…there was nowhere near enough thread left to make any more. Mum to the rescue again! More rummaging in the cupboard and out came a bag crammed full of embroidery threads.

Genie’s mum agreed to let her stay the night and we eventually made enough bracelets for the WHOLE CLASS!

When we took them to school everyone wanted one. Well, everyone except Roger Whitton, who said they were stupid and girly. Only problem is we’ve got lots of ‘orders’ now from people in other classes so it looks like we’ll be making them ‘til Christmas!

If you want to find out more about Brownies and Guides in your local area why not visit their excellent web site:

www.girlguiding.org.uk