This is what I was imagining when I saw Amy’s post about Al Gore Rhythms, and the accompanying image of iron filings! My pareidolia inclinations are compulsive. I hadn’t made the direct connection between what I was wanting to see, and Woolly Willy, but surely it was just below there in the subconscious from my childhood, ready to be stirred by Amy’s joining of the dots! I guess etch-a-sketch and magnadoodle are more modern versions of the iron filing toys, but neither they nor the online Woolly Willy have quite the same wild and random results that make the real visible filings so satisfying.

It made me think about another toy from my childhood, often just a party favour. It was a small chain anchored in two places on a card. The chain had enough play in it to fall loosely between the two, making shapes that you could imagine were funny face profiles. When I was a kid I would play with the chain that anchored pens to the counter at the bank in the same way. Strange to remember when one darkened the doors of the bank regularly, and all the time we spent queuing there with passbooks! As Amy says, it sounds so ancient because it is!

These would be good things for me to include in my other blog Monkey see monkey do, which I have also just moved over to WordPress, and want to start up again (miss that monkey – she is coming!) It’s charter is How to slice a banana inside its skin and other tricks, games, idle pursuits, and things to make and do.