Playing with sticks

It's been yet another glorious day! We spent the first half of it preparing for and then having fun at a fundraising ploughman's lunch for Midi-Poddles play group. The kids had a riot and Midi even ate most of her ploughman's, including the spinach, which was a pleasant surprise. We decided to come home afterwards to play in the garden and we did. With sticks! (And a bit of string and an old sheet if you're being picky.)

We have some recently felled trees in the garden at the moment. We don't do a lot of felling generally but this was for a rather big project we have going on right now that I might post more about later, and given that we've planted over 150 trees on site since we moved here less than 2 years ago we're in credit. The trees currently down are a mixture of hazel, ash and hawthorn and I thought it woud be fun to use some of the wood. Firstly I cut six hazel rods to about 6', tied them at the top, spread the bases and tied on an old sheet to make a basic teepee playhouse for Midi for the summer.

Then while she and her dolls had a tea party in it and Mini sat in his chair chatting to the apple tree I attacked the ash cuttings. They seemed nice and bendy so I decided to have a go at weaving them and managed to knock out a pretty effective platter/basket thing in a matter of minutes.

I'm sure I could improve on it. With a longer piece for the outer ring it may be secure enough without the string, but the string looks quite nice too so maybe that could be wrapped all the way round. I was just impatient this time so only wrapped it as much as was needed to keep it secure. It was fun to do though, and it also works well as a stage for the lolly stick people we made yesterday: