I use a corner of whatever I’m sewing to stick all my pins into while I work. It works fine while I’m repairing something small. Not so great with those bigger projects like hemming curtains, there is a lot of fabric to pin into and those little things can get lost. It’s not an accident that pincushions were invented. Once upon a time pins were more expensive than they are now. The women in those days didn’t want to lose any of them. Not like myself who just thinks I’m risking injury later on when I finally do find that missing pin, in a painful way.

My only pincushions have been a tomato which had been my Aunt Sally’s when I inherited her sewing basket and a plastic thing that was meant to sit on your wrist. I never gave the plastic one much of a try. I just knew I’d never get much done with something on my wrist. But, it was a nice idea as a gift, from someone one Christmas.

I think pincushions are like aprons, very fancy and pretty but mostly practical only in a fashion sense. An apron keeps your fancy dress from getting bacon splatter. A pincushion keeps your pins collected on a pretty little thing. Both practical and yet superfluous too. You can wash your clothes, much easier than your Grandmother could. You can stick your pins onto your sleeve or in a plastic grocery bag while you sew. But, the pincushions are a really sweet and simple craft to make. They can be very detailed with lots of applique and embroidery, crochet or tatted lace too, anything you care to add to that little puff ball for pins.

My Grandmother had a button box. She would add any buttons from clothes that were worn out and being cut up to use for patches and cleaning rags. Sometimes she bought sets of 4, 6 or more buttons on sale somewhere and brought those back (kept on their cardboard packaging) and put them in the button box too.

As she got older she became legally blind and was no longer able to sew her own buttons (or anything else) as well as she used to. She was always more of a cook anyway. I still remember the white sweater I fixed for her. It had a few loose buttons and one missing. It was one of the very few times I got to look through something of my Grandmothers. She brought out the button box and let me have a look through them all. I found enough new buttons for the white sweater, all matching and all pink.

For years she would brag about how well I sewed those buttons on her sweater. She said I had done them so well they would never come off. I did too. I remember sewing them on and how honoured I was to do something, something real, for my Grandmother. Not just kid stuff playing around. She kept that sweater and the buttons did last years and years.

I still like buttons. I guess I have a soft spot for them. My Mother had a button box. My Grandmother’s buttons became part of that collection in time. My Mother gave me the button box a few years ago, when she started spending winters in Florida. We used to sew together but that was usually around the holidays. Now that I’m alone I still do some baking but not so much sewing. It’s kind of sad. I have that button box but it’s been many years since I last looked at any of the buttons in it.

There are some nice crafts with buttons, like button bouquets. I’ve seen a few uses for them other than the traditional clothing fasteners. One site has old/ vintage buttons turned into fancy rings. I’ve seen scrapbookers use buttons as flower centres in drawings. We have used buttons in place of game pieces. They string up on ribbon and look pretty girlie and pretty too.

• Vintage Buttons
• Button Floozies
• World Button Association
• National Button Society
• The British Button Society
• Ottawa Valley Button Club

National Button Day - November 16th.

It's occurred to me that I haven't had a really good blab in here for awhile. I don't have anything in particular in mind to blab about but, I seldom let that stop me.

I've got most of my old content back up again after the template change to three columns. Somethings I have just left off, they didn't seem to be going anywhere soon or had sunk into their laurels of past glory, sunk too deep to rise again. Things like BlogExplosion which was building up and yet has fallen and can't get up now. Things like MyBlogLog which is so clogged with splogs and fake friends that it didn't earn it's real estate on my sidebar. No doubt I will find new gadgets and interesting junk to fill in any gaps.

I've started to talk to a guy online and am getting to the point of meeting for coffee. He sounds like a person who has some depth, a thinking brain. Always a plus. I like having someone I can really talk to. There are always so many things in my mind but I have learned to keep quiet versus babble everything. Except here, where I pretty much talk to myself. I know people are reading it, I go out of my way to join things like Wordless Wednesday and Thursday Thirteen to get traffic and thus readers. I've concluded that I just like to feel someone is listening to me. Whatever trouble I get in, I'll pay for it later. If I can't work my way out of it I'll just add it to the pile of trouble already hanging around.

Having a pretty good day today actually. I have three out of four pairs of new pants hemmed. I ordered myself Swiss Chalet for lunch. This morning I made a cup of the new coffee I bought from Second Cup yesterday at the mall. I've had a pretty good 'weekend' off work. It was sunny out almost all day today but I didn't check to see how cold it was out there, I didn't have to. People seem to like my flower drawings for the Thursday Thirteen post, that is nice of them. I think my drawing actually is getting better too.

I think I need to do more real writing again. I miss it. Blog posts aren't, generally, real writing. Not for me anyway. I don't have a topic which I have researched and put some thought into. That is what writing should be, it should include some planning. True I have been keeping WordGrrls going with the daily writing prompts but that isn't the same as a short topical article. I did have an article started about rural exploration, so I could get that back in the works. If I could post a short article about something here, not each day, maybe once a week, that would be constructive and good discipline for getting back into some real writing versus blog babbling.

I found my sewing box today. Still can't find those web design books and that is making me crazy. But it is nice to have found the sewing box. I had forgotten I had so much stuff in there. One whole box full of assorted buttons, full to the brim. I am looking up some craft ideas for buttons. No doubt I could make something truly great with so many of them. I had thought I would use them for crazy quilting and maybe I will. The problem with quilting is having to iron the patches in order to have smooth, straight seams.

I finally wrote that letter to the guy I met through work. Maybe I never mentioned him here. He was one of the callers from Florida about cable TV, I'm tech support, remember? Anyway, he started out having a fit about the cable service. I was softly groaning about having to listen to another one of "those" callers. But somehow he toned down, said I was one of the nicest, most polite people he had talked to in trying to deal with the cable company. He was working up to asking me out but I told him I'm in Canada and then he asked if he could be my pen pal. That must have been two weeks ago now.

I wasn't sure about writing. I've got myself stuck in this way before. People in need tend to cling hard to someone nice and then you can't get them peeled off again so easily. I like having my freedom, I'd never deal well with someone clingy. Not that I'm a hard bitch, but I don't want to always have company or someone who needs me, versus someone who wants me. Also, I am giving out my home address to send a note. It is too bad he didn't have Internet and email, that would have been safer correspondence. Anyway, I found a really great card at the mall yesterday and have it ready to mail down there. Another nice grrl thing to do. I scanned the card, it really is a nice one. I talked to him awhile and the only things I really remember are that his wife and kids were killed, he works all the hours he can put in now because of that and he is in the newspaper business - I forget just what he does. I will mail it when I am waiting for the bus to go into work tomorrow.

I've seen two commercials on TV now for male enhancement, that means they must actually be buying such stuff. In a way it seems a pay back for all the body image problems they cause to women. Yet, how can men be so gullible? I guess the same as women have, those who get boob enhancements. Terry Lynn, who has too much focus on her boobs I sometimes think, is going to get a breast reduction. Her back has been sore, she even left work early one day.

I've found a site where I can upload my blog drawings. I still don't feel I can qualify them as cartoons or comics. Among people who actually can draw mine look pretty out of place, to me at least. I'm going to see if I can get them uploaded today. Also, I was invited to add my photos of abandoned houses to a site with abandoned places in Ontario. Quite nice to be asked. I have not got much done there either. So, plenty of projects to keep me busy for the rest of my last day off today. Isn't it a good thing I get another 2 days off next week?

My Grandmother liked to make puppets. She would work with kids in her small town (in Ontario) and put on whole puppet shows. They built the stage, sets, costumes, wrote plays and of course they made masses of puppets. There were different kinds, not just sock puppets. Some you put your hand inside and the more elaborate puppets came with strings attached. If we got to look at the puppets she would go on and on about how careful we were when handling the puppets with strings.

My Mother and I liked to sew together, we still do, in between her snowbird trips to Florida. We make seasonal decorations, Halloween costumes for my sister’s kids and we made old fashioned rag dolls, like Raggedy Ann. I still have the very first Raggedy Ann she made for me when I was a kid. The doll has grey hair. She still regrets that but at the time she was being thrifty, using up extra yarn from some other crafty project.

I still like sewing. When I was married my Mother treated me to a good quality sewing machine. I did start using it but have not done much. I like the hand sewing best. I embroider, I crochet (though it’s not quite the same as sewing) and I like quilting. I would really like to spend a lot more time working out how to use that machine and working on sewing projects in general. It is such a great hobby. So nice to have something lovely or practical to show for your time at the end. Best of all was working together, sewing with family.

I’m going to see what local groups I can find now that I’m living in the big city and my Mother is snowbirding till at least May. I have tons of fabric and yarn stashed around here and there to use up. Maybe I will create my own version of the grey-haired Raggedy Ann doll.

A painter has a canvas, a writer has a page, but a crafter has all sorts of mediums to choose from. Will it be fabric, clay, wood or something completely unexpected today?

Isn't it great to make something from whatever you had around the house. Cooking is like that too. Once you get the hang of it and don't use elaborate recipes that require special trips to certain specialty grocery stores. My favourite recipes are those made with leftovers originally. Soup is a prime leftover candidate. I think every flavour of soup in existence started out as someone's leftovers.

Sewing is like that too. Take your leftover fabric and turn it into a scrap quilt. Take your leftover yarn and make a shawl, scarf or granny squares. Being able to make things by hand is the ultimate in recycling and reusing.

Of course gardening lets you reuse kitchen scraps but that's pretty much seasonal in most places. If you leave out your vegetable peels for compost now you'll risk finding skunks and raccoons lurking around the place. Trust me, you don't want to come home after dark and see a skunk's eyes reflecting back from your car headlights. For some reason skunks are not afraid of people, wonder why...?

Enough reminiscing about eau de skunk. What craftiness will you be up to over the winter? Did the winter solstice take you by surprise and you've just realized half the winter is gone? Move to Canada, we still have plenty of snow just over the horizon, plenty of time left to get crafty. I'm still in the planning stages myself.