The One With Some DIY

I asked Elder Wadley how he made his ties, and that I wanted photos.

Instead he sent me an instructional video:

In case you missed it- here is a screenshot. His tie is about six feet long. I am not sure what is going on here, but hey- Brendan.

The e-mail this week:

this was a goodish week we got a lot of people to teach right now umm but our ward had a summer olympic activity recently and lol it was funny it started off as a train wreck but ended up being fun i dont mean to brag but i took gold in the shot put and high dive event and me and stallings bronzed the equestrian so that was good lol um other then that pretty normal week

I would PAY to have pictures of this Olympics crap.
He has been working on additional crafts as well. (WHATTHECRAP) I thought maybe one of my daughters would pick up my creative gene. Not my son.
Here I present an Altoids tin, converted into a speaker box:

And the the pièce de résistance: hand-stitched tee shirt couch repair. Really. Click on the picture and marvel at his sewing skills.

I see a lot of post-mission career paths here.

The One With Sewing Skills

This post needs a background story, so indulge me a little this week.
We've always encouraged our kids to be independent. This includes them taking care of their own school schedule, so we were a little taken back when Brendan enrolled himself in a sewing class. On purpose. I am not sure if he was in it for the girl to boy ratio of the class or what- but there he was.

The first we knew about it was because he needed fabric Monday morning. We were told this on Saturday night- and had to make a midnight Walmart run. This fabric was used to make a pillowcase. Now, in true Brendan fashion, he procrastinated the many steps to the pillowcase. While cramming for the final grade- one day, he walked into sewing class to a substitute teacher.
Brendan is never one to turn down opportunity.
He spent that class period furiously completing his whole pillowcase.

Let's chat about this pillowcase.
It was supposed to be rectangular, with rolled edge trim and a cuff.
Brendan created more of an elongated triangle.
The cuff and rolled trim end sloped down to a tighter end- one that would never allow space for an actual pillow. The cuff was gathered in some places, the rolled trim stuck out in spiky random areas, and non-existent in others. There was one area along a seam where you could tell that the feed dogs on the machine took the fabric down, and tore it. This hole was marked with a half inch of balled and tangled up thread on both ends. Brendan took the hole and just went back and forth over it until it was kinda closed up.
This pillowcase was amazing as you can imagine.
I took pictures somewhere and I actually set the thing aside to present to his future bride.
It has since disappeared. I suspect sadly, that it found it's way into the trash by its creator.
The baffling thing was that he got a B on that sucker.
When I asked him how- he said "I took it up to the substitute teacher. I told her I was so proud of myself because I had never sewn anything in my whole life."
He earned a PITY GRADE, people.
He worked the system!
The real teacher came back, never saw the project, the grade was over and done, and he didn't have to spend another minute on it.
I didn't know whether to be mad at him, or proud of him.

With that in mind, here is his e-mail this week, and a little back and forth between us.
(One more thing. I had mentioned to him that on our family road trip this week, Sam got our old yet reliable mini-van up to 100 mph. That will explain the first horrifying line.)

hola madre ill be in kokomo for 6 more weeks one time i got the van to 120 what who said that lol any way this week was good we put someone on date for baptism ummmmmmidk mom im sorry i suck at emailing but honestly i get to this ol computer lab every week and im like wtf did i do this week sorry umm i went on exchanges with elder johnstone hes cool he came out one after i did i really like him i also made some ties this week i bought some fabric from the old walmart and well just made some ties so thats cool 

What.  I want pictures of the Walmart ties you made!! Did you use a sewing machine?

no its all hand stitched i dont have pics ill send them next week if i remember

How the frack long did it take you to hand sew a tie?

like from start to finish it took me like 3 hours i do it when were in for the night

I have to see this. Mostly cause I remember your pillow case.

yeah yeah yeah whatever the ties are easy