Traditional Knives and Toys

Just Tom. said:
I brought my folks milkshakes on a hot day earlier this week, and my dad reminded me of this favorite childhood pocket knife activity which I had forgotten all about. Did anybody else make “duck calls” out of straws as a kid? I remember it worked with paper straws too, but they got mushy after a few quacks…

3hbjyIc.jpg
Click to expand...
Never did that with a drinking straw, but growing up on a farm we learned something that I'm guessing is similar from my Dad.
We'd hold a blade of grass pressed lengthwise between our thumbs (grass blade and thumbs all parallel) and then blow through the gap between our thumbs that ran from where the bases of the thumbs pressed together to where the thumb knuckles pressed together. The grass essentially acted as a "reed" and would quack/squawk as we blew air across it.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_3zj4YsvZPMe20PEPqs2c4Ac16

- GT
 
5K Qs said:
Never did that with a drinking straw, but growing up on a farm we learned something that I'm guessing is similar from my Dad.
We'd hold a blade of grass pressed lengthwise between our thumbs (grass blade and thumbs all parallel) and then blow through the gap between our thumbs that ran from where the bases of the thumbs pressed together to where the thumb knuckles pressed together. The grass essentially acted as a "reed" and would quack/squawk as we blew air across it.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_3zj4YsvZPMe20PEPqs2c4Ac16

- GT
Click to expand...
We did that too! :thumbsup::D

My teenage daughter was not impressed or amused by my ability to make honking noises with a straw. Kids these days! 🤣
 
Last edited:
Jack Black said:
EqASm80.jpg
Click to expand...

I think “GIANT” might be a bit of a generous description for that magnet. I’d guess “powerful” might be a stretch as well, but maybe not. 😁

baxtrom said:
A Mora with a traditional toy horse of the kind that Swedish woodsmen would carve when away from the family at work. Both the Morakniv and the Dalahäst (Dalecarlia horse) are traditionally tied to the small city of Mora in Dalecarlia, Sweden. Lots of Dalecarlia horses have been carved by fathers working in the forests, at charcoal piles et c. The traditional “kurbits” painting is a later 19th century invention.

View attachment 1878285
Click to expand...

Very nice! :thumbsup:

5K Qs said:
I'll admit that I'm fascinated by some baby toys. :rolleyes:🤓
One of my favorites is a set of nestable/stackable cups like this; I think this particular brand is called "Measure-Up Cups":
View attachment 1878370

They can be nested inside one another (as on the left in the pic), or turned upside down and stacked as a tower (as on the right); hours of fun!
If you imagine taking the 3 smallest cups and adding them into the "nest" on the left, there seems to be a color pattern from the smallest cup to the largest: blue, red, yellow, green, repeated twice over the 8 smallest cups. But the 4 largest cups have the colors blue, red (so far, so good), green??, blue?? I found this quite offensive, but then my wife discovered (after my photo) another set of these cups, and it turns out the 2 biggest cups from each set had been switched somehow, and now we have two PERFECT sets including a thrice-repeated color pattern in each (but different sequence of colors between the 2 sets).

- GT
Click to expand...

The kids have a set of those they play with in the bath, though I think there might only be 8 of them.

Baby/kids toys can be fun to play with, can’t they? 🤣 A few months ago my mom bought the girls a set of these crinkly tubes (they might be called pop tubes?) that can be expanded/compressed, made into shapes, joined together, etc. They also make a pleasant noise that rises and falls in pitch as you compress or expand them. I’ll admit to fidgeting with them quite a bit when they first got them. 😁

5K Qs said:
Here's another of my daughter's toys from over 30 years ago, uncovered in the Big Basement Clean-up of this summer. I suppose it's an appropriate baby toy if all one does is take rings off the post or put rings on the post. But some of the uses to which it could be put seem awfully sophisticated for a baby to be able to handle. For example:
1) I've tried using it as a Ring Toss game, and it's incredibly challenging to toss those rings onto the post from any distance greater than about 1.5".

2) Just out of curiosity, I've wondered how many different arrangements of the rings on the post are possible. But a baby would have to exhibit a surprisingly advanced mastery of systematic processes and counting, or a precocious knowledge of introductory combinatorics principles from mathematics, to determine that there are 7! = 5040 different arrangements of all 7 rings on the post between base and red"capstone").

3) If you had a couple of extra "empty" posts, you could demonstrate the "Towers of Hanoi" problem, in which the goal is to figure out the minimal number of "legal moves" needed to transfer all of the rings (not counting the "capstone" again) from one post to another, if a legal move consists of taking the top ring off of one post and putting it onto one of the other two posts on which all of the rings are larger than the one being moved. I think the answer is (2^7) - 1 = 127 moves, but I'd appreciate someone checking for me. (ETA: Oops! I just checked out some simple cases with fewer rings, and I think my original result has one more move than necessary, so I'm changing from 2^7 = 128 to (2^7) - 1 = 127.)

View attachment 1879656

- GT
Click to expand...

There’s a playing card variant of Towers of Hanoi that you might like, GT, called Batty. It was developed by blind card mechanic Richard Turner. He sells a deck of cards specifically for playing the game, but it can be played with any standard deck. It’s been a while since I’ve played, but I got to where I could do level 11 consistently, which takes a minimum of 1,023 moves.

Here’s a link to a written explanation of the game, and a video of Richard Turner demonstrating it. (If you’re unfamiliar with Richard Turner, you might look up some of his other videos, particularly his card mechanic demonstrations. He’s a fascinating guy.)


Just Tom. said:
I brought my folks milkshakes on a hot day earlier this week, and my dad reminded me of this favorite childhood pocket knife activity which I had forgotten all about. Did anybody else make “duck calls” out of straws as a kid? I remember it worked with paper straws too, but they got mushy after a few quacks…

3hbjyIc.jpg
Click to expand...

I didn’t know you could do that with a straw, but we’ve got a long car ride tomorrow, so I might have to give it try, keep the kids entertained. 😁 A couple years ago I bought all the kids (mine and their cousins) real duck calls for Christmas. The kids thought they were great! The parents, not so much. 🤣
 
btb01 said:
I didn’t know you could do that with a straw, but we’ve got a long car ride tomorrow, so I might have to give it try, keep the kids entertained. 😁
Click to expand...
I’m sure the hours-long serenade will be delightful…

In case my post made it look more complicated than it really is, all you do is flatten one end of the straw and cut it to a point. When it springs back to shape, you get this:

h0dDO61.jpg


It might take a few tries to get it to produce a noise, you have to experiment a little with lip position and air pressure. You can cut the straws to different lengths to get different pitches.

Enjoy!
 
5K Qs said:
Never did that with a drinking straw, but growing up on a farm we learned something that I'm guessing is similar from my Dad.
We'd hold a blade of grass pressed lengthwise between our thumbs (grass blade and thumbs all parallel) and then blow through the gap between our thumbs that ran from where the bases of the thumbs pressed together to where the thumb knuckles pressed together. The grass essentially acted as a "reed" and would quack/squawk as we blew air across it.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_3zj4YsvZPMe20PEPqs2c4Ac16

- GT
Click to expand...
I can remember doing that too 😁 Also make whistles out of sycamore, using a pocket knife 👍
5K Qs said:
:cool::thumbsup:🤓
My daughter is almost 34 now, but I dimly recall that when she was a teenager she was seldom impressed or amused by whatever I did.

- GT
Click to expand...
LOL! Teenage daughters are a tough audience! 🙄😁👍
btb01 said:
I think “GIANT” might be a bit of a generous description for that magnet. I’d guess “powerful” might be a stretch as well, but maybe not. 😁
Click to expand...
Yes, neither "GIANT" nor "powereful"! 🤨🤣👍
 
5K Qs said:
Never did that with a drinking straw, but growing up on a farm we learned something that I'm guessing is similar from my Dad.
We'd hold a blade of grass pressed lengthwise between our thumbs (grass blade and thumbs all parallel) and then blow through the gap between our thumbs that ran from where the bases of the thumbs pressed together to where the thumb knuckles pressed together. The grass essentially acted as a "reed" and would quack/squawk as we blew air across it.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_3zj4YsvZPMe20PEPqs2c4Ac16

- GT
Click to expand...
I remember trying to get a sound doing that, but never had much skill at it. I had better luck making an acorn cap whistle.
 
I discovered that I had a couple of unposted toy photos! ;):thumbsup:
This little tableau was on a retaining wall I walk past on my usual route to or from work. I think it first appeared last spring and was there almost until Thanksgiving. I don't know what these toys are called, but 25 or more years ago, my daughter had some tiny dolls and accessories called Polly Pockets, and these toys on the wall remind me of those. The knife is a Chinese Buck 373 which is the last pocket knife my late father-in-law carried; I stick it in my watch pocket quite often these days, whatever else I might be carrying.
wilshire.wall.jh373.far.jpeg

wilshire.wall.jh373.near.jpeg

- GT
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top