Giant bubbles, plus a brief tutorial

Summer starting to drag?  Need some new activities to keep people busy?  What you need is my daughter A. to come up with new things to do.  But, since I am rather fond of her and not willing to share, I'll give you the next best thing:  instructions for how to do this cool thing yourself.

We went to a street fair a few weeks ago and one of the entertainers was making enormous bubbles in a park.  A. evidently paid very close attention to how it was done (far better attention than me) and was able to recreate the technique at home yesterday.

It's actually very simple to make these very large bubbles:

This is G.,  and how cool is this picture?

To do this yourself, you need two dowels (or some type of long stick), some yarn or string, and a small carabiner (I'm pretty sure some metal washers would work as well).  Cut the yarn into two lengths.  The shorter one (perhaps about a yard long) and tie each end to the dowels.  The longer one (perhaps 2 to 3 times as long as the first... it doesn't need to be exact) is also tied to the ends of the dowels.  The carabiner is clipped to the longer piece of yarn.  You have essentially made a triangle with the yarn and the dowels are attached to two of the corners:

The yarn is blue; I know it's difficult to see.

To make bubbles, take a shallow container and fill it with a mixture of dish soap and water.  Holding a dowel in each hand, dip the yarn completely in the liquid. 

Bring up the yarn and at the same time, separate the dowels so that you are opening up the triangle.  Move the bubble maker a bit (just like a bubble wand) so that the bubble starts to fill up away from the bubble maker.  Once you have a bubble, carefully close the dowels so that you complete the bubble and are sort of cutting it off so it can blow away.

If you're really good, you can make a whole series of bubbles without having to dip the yarn into the liquid again.



It's a little tricky to get the hang of at first... the whole opening/closing thing... but it makes some great bubbles and keeps people occupied for quite a while.

Enjoy.

Also, I have an article about tips to make family car trips manageable.  Take a look.