I haven't worn a shower cap since I was a little girl visiting my Grandmother. I wasn't even in the shower.  We were having a girl's night and I went to bed with my head full of curlers. The shower cap was pink and plastic, with frills. My Grandmother would wear it in the shower when she just wanted a quick wash or to cool down in the summer, without getting her hair wet.

There are alternate uses for shower caps. If you're traveling light you can wrap it around your toothbrush, toothpaste and shampoo to keep them sorted out in your luggage. Saves buying an extra little bag just to hold your bathing essentials. I bought my niece curlers last year. I hadn't even thought of myself with curlers and the shower cap so many years ago. As I took the curlers out of her hair the next morning I used the shower cap to store them in, thinking it would keep them together for the next time we curled her hair. She also had the shower cap on overnight, it does work to keep the curlers from coming loose over night. One little tradition passed on to the next generation.

These days I'm usually in the shower to wash my hair, scrub up and get out. I like to shower in the evening to give myself a little time to stand there and enjoy the hot water.  I don't use a shower cap. They are one of those nice, old fashioned kind of girly things that (in these days) seem to be more ceremonial than practical. When did you last think of a shower cap? When did you last use one?

How about a royal shower cap?

Fancy new shower caps for sale with Jennifer Lyn, Diva Sharon, Mimi a la Mode and Retro Revival.

I used to have cookie cutters that belonged to my Grandmother. I remember a gingerbread man. It was aluminum, a dull silver colour. The shape was filled in, not like the modern ones that are open on top. The old gingerbread man was wearing a pointy hat. That's about all I can really, clearly remember about him any more.

It's been a long time since I've seen that cookie cutter. Too much moving, too many boxes lost or damaged. Lost due to things like the water heater bursting and flooding the basement. Mice nibbling at boxes which were then thrown out as useless. Or, boxes just being forgotten in some corner of one basement or another. It's sad to lose things that way. It bothers me more than any other way of losing things. As if the things lost that way were never important enough to remember.

But, I have the hope that my lost things will be found someday and become someone's great find, treasured all over again, though they won't know the history. They won't know that cookie cutter once belonged to my Grandmother. They won't know my Grandmother, my Mother, my brother and sisters and I made gingerbread people many times with that old cookie cutter in the kitchen of the house I remember best from my growing up days. I wish I could tell whoever finds that cookie cutter the history behind it. Tell them about how my Grandmother was once nicknamed Pepper and how she liked to plant potatoes in the garden to aggravate my Grandfather. I'd like to tell them about how she fought breast cancer for years until she had to show/ teach us all how to die quietly, with pride and courage. I miss her. I really wish we had that cookie cutter still. There is some hope it will turn up in a box not opened during years of moving from place to place. More likely it is gone, to be found by someone who will wonder about that cookie cutter and other things that may be in the box they find in some corner of the basement of the house they move into.

It would be nice to tell them about that cookie cutter. To let them know it's not just another old cookie cutter. But, it doesn't work that way with lost treasures. The story becomes a secret known only to those who lost it. Those who find it can only wonder or imagine what the history behind it might be. Maybe, when they imagine the story they will get some of it right. That would be nice.

I have other new cookie cutters. A small collection of them. This Christmas I tried making gingerbread men again. I made the batter from a recipe online. But, when I tried to cut out the cookies the batter was too runny and sticky. It could not hold the shape. So no gingerbread men again this year. I will find a better recipe next year. Ideally, I'd like to get matching cookie cutters for gingerbread men and women and another for a gingerbread house cookie shape. Those would be the pinnacle of my collection.

Note: The aluminum gingerbread man in this article, looks like my Grandmother's old one. It might be the very same kind that she had. Also, we had a Christmas tree and that bunny from this collection too. Ours was badly dented in the middle though.

Resources:

The Cookie Cutter Collector's Club -- Based in the US. The 2010 convention will be in California, in June.

Cookie Cutter Search -- From the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club.

There are cookie cutter collectors displaying their cookie cutters in photos on Flickr: Cookie Cutters.

After you look at that group, see how the cookies were decorated on Flickr: Cookie Cutter Cookies.

Brand Name Cooking -- Has posted a good article about collecting cookie cutters.

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.

I do like maps, strongly, not quite enough to love them. Love being such a big word in small letters. I use a map when I explore rural ruins. I use it to find the locations when others tell me they have found an abandoned farmhouse in my area. I have a backroad map which (so far) has been very reliable, even when I've taken some pretty far fetched turns.

For his birthday, I gave my nephew two full poster-sized maps. One of Canada and the other of the World. We put them up in his bedroom. Is it only a co-incidence that geography is the subject he seems to be having the most trouble with this year? I hope so. I may not be ready to tell him everything he needs to know about geography but I would like to see him learn about rocks, maps and navigation. One of the most important things in life is knowing how to navigate your way.

I remember the last time I looked at a really old map. I liked seeing the terrors written on there like monsters and the edge of the world. Thanks to cartographers and world explorers and ancient navigators we know the world does not end with a sudden drop. Modern explorers and those into geocaching use a GPS to find their way around. But even then, the old fashioned map is at the root of every exploration.

• The International Map Collector's Society
• Map History.info
• Road Map Collectors Association
• Flickr: Maps and Charts
• Flickr: Cartography
• Flickr: Pictures of Maps
• Mapperz: The mapping news blog.
• The Map Room: A weblog about maps.
• Strange Maps
• Cartographer's Guild
• CartoTalk: A forum for cartography and design.
• Cartophilia: Maps and map memorabilia.
• Cartography Online
• The Canadian Cartographic Association

Old/ Vintage Maps

• Map the Universe: Antique Map Collecting
• Flickr: Vintage Road Maps
• Flickr: Old Maps
• Flickr: Maps on Postcards
• Show Off Your Maps
• Pauus Swaen Auction: Tips for Map Collectors
• International Antiquarian Map Sellers Association
• MapHist: An email discussion about the history of cartography.

Hand Drawn Maps

• Flickr: Handmade Cartography
• Flickr: Creative Cartography
• Flickr: Illustration Maps
• Flickr: Altered Maps
• Making Maps: DIY Cartography
• Hand Drawn Map Association
• The Maps Project