I was inspired to write this post by Susan Beal at West Coast Crafty, a great blog.
When I was raking through my button tin the other week looking for buttons for my button bag, I was taken right back as usual to the many times that I’ve drizzled buttons through my fingers since childhood. I inherited my mum’s button tin and also some from my granny and mother-in-law. So quite a few of them are the very same ones that I played with as a wee girl. It’s a bit like walking down memory lane in the same way that a patchwork quilt can be as you remember the original garment which has been recycled. The big orange, flat buttons came off a really hideous candlewick dressing gown which my mum had in the 1960s. Both mum and dressing gown are long gone now.
I have two boys and they lost interest in buttons at a very early age, in fact I don’t recall them playing with them much at all.
They became far more engrossed with marbles – or jiggies as we call them. They grew out of them when they were aged about 10 or 11. When I asked Duncan why marbles were so much more interesting to boys he replied that boys are obviously going to like things that are ball shaped. Well, I’m saying nothing about that. I have custody of the marbles for the moment and as they are things of beauty I show them off in a glass topped jar. I think that things have to have a competitive element about them to hold boys interest for long.
It occurred to me that yet another of my collections is beads, which when you think about it are really a fab conglomeration of marbles and buttons. You can’t get much better than that. I wonder why I haven’t used beads much in my sewing? Watch this space.
What a treasure! I wish I knew what happened with my mom’s button box. With all we were dealing with when we moved her, I totally lost the plot.
I have quite an accumulation of beads on my own account, though. I’ve made quite a bit of jewelry (there’s a post on my blog with some photos.)
I can’t knit for (insert rhyming word here). But I have done a fair amount of cross-stitch and needlepoint over the years.
I now find most of my precious crafting moments devoted to scrapbooks of my travels – although “photo journaling” sounds fancier. Is that at all popular in Scotland?
Pearl,
My mum passed her buttons on to me before she died. I read your lovely jewelry post ages ago when I first started visiting you, I’m very impressed, I couldn’t do it I’m sure. At the moment I don’t seem to be able to get around to doing much in the way of craft stuff.
Scrapbooking is popular here but I’m never really sure what people do or add to them. It sounds like a good way of preserving memories though, especially as you do so much travelling around.
I give up. I’ve been trying to post a link for you forever. It just won’t go through.
I was trying to send you a link to a scrapbook website that had exhibited some of my Scotland pages. I guess wordpress won’t let you post a link in a comment.
Maybe I’ll do a blog post on scrapbooks one day and post some there.
Pearl,
I would love you to do a blog post on scrapbooks some day. I’ve been wondering if I should be on Facebook, I’ve avoided it because I doubt if I would use it and also my sons are on it, like most young folk. I don’t want them to think I’m ‘spying’.I know that you use Facebook but I think that you will have lots of people to keep in touch with, which I don’t.