A bit of twine and a bit of time...

Doing things for myself has become a sort of a life-style lately.  I’ve learned that with a little imagination and ingenuity I can accomplish a lot of stuff that I never really thought I could.  Or would.  It’s very empowering to face a challenge and find a creative solution. 

When I first moved into Alegria, I had little furniture.  Coincidently, a friend was moving out-of-province at about the same time and I was able to score a few goodies from her to help me get started.  One of the things she sold me was a set of six lawn chairs that served as my dining room chairs for nine months.   The weaving on a couple of them had started to unravel.  I gave duct tape a brief consideration, but decided to let nature take its course instead.  If and when they fell apart, I would figure something out.

A lawn chair in its original state.

They fell apart.  One by one, five of the six chairs unraveled to the point of being un-usable, so I retired them to the future-project section of the shed. 

Not too comfy any more!

Somewhere along the line I asked my daughter, Bizz, if she had any ideas on how to fix the chairs.  They really are nice chairs and it’s always good to have something for people to sit on around the fire pit.  Of course, she did!  (Was there ever any doubt!?) 

What would you do with
a giant ball of twine?

Last night Bizz arrived at Alegria with an enormous ball of twine.  Oliver thought he’d died and gone to cat heaven when he saw it!  But we had other plans for it.  A quick Youtube lesson on weaving chair seats ensued and we figured that we could easily manage the method demonstrated. 

The first step was to cut off the remains of the old chair seat.  That took mere minutes and what we were left with was a gaping hole that suddenly looked more daunting than I had expected.  No matter!  Bizz spooled off a swack of twine from the roll and tied one end to the chair frame.  Together we started weaving it back and forth and around, back and forth and around…  and soon the pattern started to reveal itself.  Bizz decided to get a second chair going and I continued with a solo effort to make the chair usable again. 

It was a slow process.  Two hours later the chair seat was still not done.  It was getting late, so, pleased with the results so far, we put away our supplies and called it a night.

The pattern is emerging...

Two hours of weaving got me this far.

After dinner tonight, I finished my first chair.  It took another good hour to complete the weaving, but just look at what we did:

The finished chair.

Top view of the new chair seat.

So the seat doesn’t match the back.  When you’re sitting on it, you can’t see either of them anyway.