Illustration Friday: Mesmerizing

I'm beginning to think that I have the Kenner toy company to thank for my fascination with radial symmetry. In 1966, they introduced the Spirograph, one of the most mesmerizing toys of all time. I drew with mine until its skinny pens dried out and I had to make do with whatever else we had in the house. And when they introduced the Super Spirograph a year later, well, I was one obsessed little geek...er, little girl.


I'm sure the seeds of my interest had already been sown: Like most kids, I loved making paper snowflakes, and I still love the expressions on kids' faces when they open up that pie-shaped paper they've been cutting. But if I had to guess, my very first glimpse of the amazing radial symmetry found in nature was probably this one—still one of the most elegant examples, to be sure—the star in the center of an apple.

So, thank you, Kenner Products, for the fact that I once wrote a college term paper on these, have this on my coffee table, and these in my portfolio:

If you're interested, here's a link to a fabulous page by someone who clearly loved his Spirograph as much as I loved mine. Did you have a favorite creative toy growing up? Let the nostalgia begin!

Illustration Friday: Toy

Some toys are timeless.  I have a big, cloth bag full of wooden alphabet blocks that belonged to my husband when he was a child, and which were used for years by our two children.  I love them—many have incised pictures on the side opposite the letter.  They're wonderful images, which are also timeless: a chick, a quail, a nest, a vase, a fox.  But I'd imagine that most children use them to learn the alphabet and create their own words, so I arranged three of them into my word for this week: