"Do These Make Me Look Smart?"

"Sure, Tessie. You look twice as intelligent as you did a couple of minutes ago...." That was the conversation after the glasses were made and tried on.

Back to the beginning. Tessie was grousing and complaining about nobody taking her seriously. "I have been carrying the abacus around all day and moving the beads back and forth on the wire and it just doesn't compute.... Somehow, I don't think that this is going to replace your computer." And then, "Why did I fight Zar for this thing. It doesn't make me any smarter."

I answered with, "Tessie, toting that thing around makes you look just as intelligent as wearing wire rimmed glasses would." Oops. I shouldn't have said that!

She immediately insisted that was what she needed. A new pair of glasses would do the trick... Sure it would...

I decided that humoring her was easier than fighting. Glasses don't take too long in the mini world...No eye charts. No tests. Just whip them out with 32 gage wire and some Aleene's Clear Gel Glue.

I grabbed a toothpick for the bridge, a couple of thin paintbrush handles for forming the lens and my handy dandy needle nosed pliers and tweezers for bending.

I formed the bridge over a toothpick(about the same width as the bridge of Tessie's nose.

Then I bent both sides of the wire back to form a "W" shape. I squeezed the sides together a bit more with the pliers.

Then I wrapped each side around a paintbrush handle, making sure that they were both the same size circle. I went around the paintbrush, over the top, down around the bottom and back over the top again to the side where I wanted the earpieces to be. That was about 1 1/2 times.

In the photo, you can see that after I got back to the sides, I bent the ear pieces straight back along the sides of the brush handles.

If I were just going to set them on a table or a book somewhere, I would have curved the end of each arm to go around the ear and cut them off evenly.

In this case, Tessie wanted to wear them so I just left them straight and cut them off to a reasonable length.

This method of making glasses has been around as long as I can remember. I just thought that I would throw it into the mix for those of you that have never done it before. The Clear Gel glue was my idea. I am always nervous about white glue turning clear.

Then I put a dot of the clear glue where each lens should be. She needs them fairly thick....She can't see the nose in front of her face on most days.....

Now....Doesn't she look a lot smarter than she did a few minutes ago? Say "Yes!" That is if you don't want to start an hour long argument. She thinks she does. That's the important part!

You will notice that she no longer needs the abacus to add.....She is back to using the finger and toe system of math.

See you tomorrow and so will Tessie, if she can remember where she put her glasses.