Did you Etch Sketches or Pop Beads or...?

HALLIE EPHRON: Apparently Etch A Sketches are flying off the shelves in the wake of an imprudent comment by one of Romney's handlers.

Now I never had an Etch A Sketch, but my daughter who's now architect could do amazing things with the one we got her at an yard sale (where else?) I tried but was hopeless without any "erase some" function. It's either erase NONE or erase ALL.

As a kid, I tinkered around with Spirograph. Too cerebral. For a while I was very big into Paint

by Numbers (Pinkie after the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence), though mostly I did not finish them. When I got older and tried my hand atneedlepoint, same deal. I did all the middle bits with the colors I liked -- pink and red and purple -- and stopped. It still amazes me that I can finish a manuscript.

Paper dolls were just my speed. No creativity required. They don't make them like they used to with the dolls in their undies that you punched out of stiff cardboard. You could actually stand them up hang the clothing that you cut out onto them. A set kept me quiet for hours on end.

Did you etch sketches? Paint numbers? Pop beads? And what does it tell us about you??

RHYS BOWEN: My kids loved Etch A Sketch and our old battered one is still a hit with the grandchildren. Like you, Hallie, I was hopeless. Could not make it do what I wanted. I never painted by numbers either.

I have a hooked rug of a shaggy dog that I started when my oldest was 5. She now has children so you can see how long it has remained unfinished. But I can't throw it out. But I do knit, crochet and paint water colors and I love to do beading. I can't sit and watch TV without busy hands.

HALLIE: Paint! Really? Well, that explains why the settings in your books are so vivid.

JAN BROGAN: I had an Etch-a-Sketch and I loved it, but don't think I was an Etch-a-Sketch virtuoso or anything. I did paint a lovely watercolor of a young girl sitting on a fence, that I think I must have copied from a book cover. The only reason I remember it, is that when my daughter was little I had the painting framed into one of those long, lipstick mirrors for her and she loved it. It still amazes me that I painted it - probably at about 14 when one of my best friends was into art - because I'm not visually artistic. No inclinations or talent whatsoever. I

will take credit for being one hell of a good copier, though.

I used to embroider and I've knit at least two sweaters - one of them an Icelandic sweater (not the one on the right, that's just mohair). But I grew up in a rough-a-tumble household of boys, where I was every bit as rough and tumble, and every time my eldest brother, Bob, would see me knitting he would shake his head and say: say: "What are you doing? This is completely out of character." And I think he was right!

LUCY BURDETTE: Jan, that's such a funny comment! I know we had Etch a Sketches in our home, but don't remember much about using one. Obviously we're all creative in some way right, but I don't have the kind of artistic talent Rhys seems to have in spades.

I did take a Rick Worth painting class last year in Key West. He's famous for painting cars (called "conch cars") and walls as well as regular canvases, and it's all done with acrylics. There must have been about 30 of us in the room facing front. As he painted, he told us where to make lines and with what colors--not paint by number, but paint by ear and sight. And then he came around the room and fixed what we messed up. I was pretty pleased with how mine turned out, though you aren't going to see them at a gallery:).

I used to embroider little cartoon figures on clothes too--I'm sorry I haven't saved any of those. And one day, I swear I'm going to take a class on collage. That would be fun--and maybe manageable with my level of talent!

HALLIE: OK, here's two paintings - one is Lucy's and the other is Rick Worth's.... Whose is whose?? I'm impressed, Lucy!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Etch a Sketch always bugged me, because it was so--impermanent. Which, know, was the whole deal. I am completely un-artistic, although I longed to be creative, it was always a disaster. However! I rocked, I mean, ROCKED, those potholder-making things

where you wove looped pieces of fabric on a square metal loom, and then somehow linked the edges together. Remember? I CHURNED those out.

I also had a brief flirtation with knitting--andmade a sweater that would have been perfect for someone with a body out of a carnival fun mirror. I think part of it has to do with gratification--I'm not very good at waiting.

I did design, plot out, and sew a perfect needlepoint portrait of Pogo, which I still have, but I didn't have the patience to do the whole background, so there it sits.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, I loved Etch a Sketch! Didn't know it had made a comeback. Glad, for whatever bizarre reason.

I don't know that I was particularly good at it, though. I did go through a stage of drawing in charcoal and pastels. I had all those books... How to Draw Horses. How to Draw Birds. How to Draw Trees... (My trees were definitely better than my horses.) I did pop beads. Made pot

holders in Girl Scouts, which I hated. Never learned to knit, crochet, or sew.

I was more of a Collector Girl. Was anyone else a rock hound? I had a box with little compartments for all my rocks and minerals, carefully labeled. Can you say NERD? (What I really wanted was model trains, but my brother got those.)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, Hallie that paint-by-number picture of "Pinkie" is bringing it all back to me. I can literally smell the paints that came in those little plastic containers. Mmm-mmm. Probably something toxic that was banned by the EPA in the 80s.

I liked the Etch-a-Sketch, though I was never very good at drawing actual, you know, pictures with it. Also had a Spirograph, though I wasn't as fond of it--there wasn't much room for your own creativity in there. I used to make the big loopy spirograph outlines and then color in the little slivers in all different colors. I loved drawing with a passion, so much that when I was in my early teens, my dad came home one day with a wooden box filled with colored pencils in every shade imaginable. He must have bought out the artists' supply store. One of the best gifts ever, and I still have it--my three children have all used those pencils for their own art projects.

Oh and fabric arts--I went through a stage where I made crocheted laces using a large wooden spool with nails driven into the top of it. (I realize saying this makes me sound like Laura Ingalls Wilder.) The issue of course, is: what do you do with crocheted laces made from string after you've given all your friends bracelets? I never figured that out.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Had the Etch a Sketch but I confess I didn't see the point of it - after all, you worked so hard and then IT DISAPPEARED! Made potholders (like Hank) but my faves were the EasyBake Oven - even then I was a baker -

sketching with Venus colored pencils and making models, like the Visible Man or the Visible Horse. Had a brief flirtation with model cars and for some reason the name Ed "Big Daddy" Roth just popped into my head. Must Google him. Good name for a character.

For games - it was either Scrabble, Risk or Monopoly. Anyone remember Old Maid? What was that? Sigh..another Google.

HALLIE: Of COURSE I remember Old Maid. And Visible Man is reminded me of the chemistry sets I loved. Much more fun to concoct a potion and blow it up than to etch a sketch and shake it away.

So please, tell us about the crafts and games you craved, and if you dare, what it tells us about you.