I grew up with a junk yard, owned by my grandfather, literally in my back yard. This junkyard had previously been the home of a turkey farm and contained the remnants of a barn that had been about a mile long before the land was parceled and sold. The barn was used to store all manner of things one may find in abandon junk cars. I grew up exploring this strange world of discarded junk during periods of restlessness when I was told to "go outside" and found myself unsupervised, bored, and filled with endless curiosity.
Before I was in kindergarten, I was playing with tools, left over car parts, random pieces of wire, weird springs and gears, clothing and blankets found in junk cars, and the insides of cassette tapes...yes, that weird plastic string that held the sounds of the 70's and 80's. I became proficient and using the plastic string to braid ropes and using the ropes to string together gears, springs, wires, and old bottles to make mobiles, windchimes, some rendition of dream catchers, and different types of toys for playing in overgrown fields.
Exploratory missions for finding tinker fairy supplies also included collecting interesting rocks, pieces of bark, leaves, long grasses, pine cones, and many other tiny pieces of nature that could become a part of my creations.