Last semester Ryan took a Home Economics class.   His middle school offers a variety of elective classes so I was a little surprised that he decided on home ec.  “It’s the food,”  he explained when I asked about his decision.  And that makes sense; what growing teenage boy doesn’t think of food all the time.

But eating isn’t all they did in class.  There was a whole unit on sewing. Ryan made a really cool gym bag which he actually uses.  During back-to-school night, the teacher had mentioned that kids can bring stuff from home to work on, if they wanted.  Darning socks was the only thing I could think of and I was pretty sure Ryan wouldn’t be too interested.

Then one afternoon my very tall brother sat in one of the slingback chairs I have on the back patio.  The canvas material ripped and he fell through to the cement.  Ouch.

But that gave me the idea of having Ryan make me new ones.  To be truthful, I first looked in the catalog where I bought the chairs to see if I could purchase replacement “slings”.  No luck.  So that’s when I thought of Ryan.  But I was pretty sure, just like darning socks, it wouldn’t be something he’d want to do.  So I offered him money.  After all, one of the ways for kids to earn extra money is to do those “above-and-beyond” jobs.  I told him I’d give him $15 per sling and I wanted two slings.  I figure the other one is about to go soon so I might as well be prepared.

Over the course of about a month Ryan worked on the slings during his silent reading class.  Luckily his home ec teacher was also his silent reading teacher so it worked out well.  Otherwise, it would have been necessary to give up part of his lunch which pretty much guaranteed that it wouldn’t get done, money or not.

Not long ago he arrived home with both slings.  That’s when I realized I made a measurement error and the slings were too long.   Measure twice, cut once.  I was lucky I measured wrong in my favor.   

The slings are finally done and they’re awesome.  He did a great job.  Except for the fact that he sewed in all of the pins on the top of one of the slings.  Bummer.  But he’s learned a lot about sewing and, boy, can he make a killer omelete.