Then we realized that handing a child a sharp needle didn't mean she knew how to use it. "We might be crazy," we said, "but we'll see what happens." We started with a gnome. As we cut capes for sixty gnomes, we looked at one another. What if we taught them how to make toys? We would help them make their own little gnome family, we decided. I worked with our art teacher, Asia, to develop a handwork program for our school. I taught second grade at the time, at the Nevada City School of the Arts in Northern California. Those little gnomes opened up the world of hand-crafted toys for me. Now those gnomes are tokens for game boards that she draws herself, and pocket-friends, and family for little garden-houses that she builds out of sticks and leaves. I kept them on a shelf until she decided playing with toys was more fun than eating them. And my daughter had her own set of seasonal gnomes, made by her own mom. My own little girl was a baby and I wondered, could I make her a toy? I used wooden peg people from the local craft store and scraps of felt. I grew up with toys made by strangers, toys that I bought, toys that I opened. In 2003, a little experiment changed my world.
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