Summer Camp

So I have survived my first week of summer camp! I am a camp councellor!

Now I have worked a summer THEATRE camp many, many times, and been an after-school theatre teacher too, and while those many of those skills cross over quite well, I want you to know that summer camp is quite a different experience altogether.

In fact, I'm kinda glad I get to do both A1S1 AND Summer Day Camp. I only wish now that I were a sleep-away camp councellor! Oh Manz, how dynamite would that be? I've wanted to go to summer camp ever since I saw the Parent Trap (yeah, me and every other girl in the world right?). Oh man, remember Salute Your Shorts?

Anyway, camp is wicked fun. Three days a week I get paid to stand in a lake and do art projects on the shore. And if you have ever been to summer camp you may know that the number one art project, the old fall-back, the camp standard, is GIMP! Oh yeah. Also called 'boonoggle' I guess, but I've only ever heard it referred to as Gimp 'round these parts.

Now somehow I managed to make it all the way through like a decade of girlscouts and girlscout camp without picking up any GIMP skills at all, so I get to summer camp and am like: "Oh fuck me in the ass, fucking GIMP?!?!?" And I'm the councellor for 5th & 6th grade, and incase you didn't know, 5th & 6th grade girls are fucking AWESOME at Gimp. Like, they are fucking gimp masters. Infact, two of my girls have set up a little side business for themselves making and selling gimp jewelry and keychains that they make throughout the day. Yeah. I bought one because they made it just for me (orange gimp;).

And my partner Jess, who is my co-councellor for 5th & 6th grade was a summer camp kid herself so she is THE SHIT at gimp and also at thread? Is that what it is? String? Whatever you make awesome bracelets out of. She'd like ridiculously good at it.

^What I hope to learn before the end of the summer!!^

So I'm feeling decidedly un-crafty and like I have big old clumsy fingers and at first I avoid the gimp all together, choosing instead to supervise sand castle building.

But you can only watch so many five year olds build and collapse mediocre castles before you find yourself drawn back to the craft table (which is, also, in the comfort of the shade...).

So, lured by the pretty colors of the plastic spools, I decide to try my hand at something, anything, gimp related. But at first I'm way too embarrassed to be a 26 year old female who hasn't got a clue about gimp so I just revert to the only thing I know how to do: A braid. Just a standard 3 string braid. Um. It came out awesome, thanks for asking, but it was completely unimpressive, as you might imagine.

I have gifted it to Mr. Waite but he says it is too precious to risk wearing it so he will just keep it in a safe place somewhere.

Next day at the beach I get the fuck over myself and ask one of my 5th graders how to do something easy. She teaches me the ZIPPER STITCH and I am super-de-duper excited! It isn't much more complicated than doing a braid, but looks way more impressive!!

I think it looks like an insect! I made one of these for Mr. Waite as well. He says it shall be a keychain!

Next day, pleased with my zipper skills and yearning to move on to more complicated stuff, I ask Jess what I should learn next. She shows me the BOX STITCH, which is a badass looking mother fucker, and I'll admit, I wasn't sure I could even do it! But guess what? it isn't as hard as it looks and I has learnt it good!

Tonight I decided to try to teach myself something more complex, so I could walk into camp on tuesday and knock people's socks off, but I gotta say, I have ALOT of trouble learning from pictures and instructions. I seem to be much better at learning from real 3-d demonstrations with a person-to-person interaction.

So tonight I has failed at Butterfly and become reasonably ok at the CIRCLE, which is performed in much the same way as the Box but for some reason is Mind numbingly, brain rapingly more difficult!

So wish me luck.

And if I get good? You might just find yourself the proud new owner of a fucking GIMP KEYCHAIN! woot! Lucky you!

Also another problem I don't have at camp: here at home I have two kittehz watching my every move and every now and then choosing to attack my dangling ends. Adorable, but difficult to work around!