Bluestockings & Orange Wellies: Welcome to the Degu Station!

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Well, that's self-explanatory, I think.

Previously known as:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5176773-bluestocking-the-gerbical?page=1

My husband loves a tin. I once bought him one as a Xmas joke, it said man tin for man things.

he did go round in the afternoon gathering screws rought plugs and such like much to all our amusement.

I've got a sewing box which was given to me by my friends in the church youth group when I left for uni. (I had a misspent youth!)
The box has all my buttons, thread, needles etc in it, it's overfilled and barely closes. Quite a lot of the contents I filched from my mother's sewing box - the violet cotton bought to sew buttons onto a cardigan my grandfather knitted for me when I was about 5, for instance.

I bought my husband this tin too. He never used it and I have no idea where it is now.
There's no hope for him either!!

It is possible to keep your buttons in glass jars, sorted by colour, but this strips out much of life's mystery and adventure.

Oooh, there’s posh.

Regards, a Spikevaxxed old woman.

Bus and train tickets for book marks, surely? So you remind yourself of the last timne you read that book when you pick it up again.

Ribbons are for wrapping Christmas and birthday presents year after year after year.
(I think some of my ribbons are older than the children, and the children are all old enough to vote. )

There’s enough mystery and adventure in my past already, thank you.

If I wanted more I could just tip this lot into a heap and start again.

I love that it is sooo ocd

I haven't been on a bus or a train since about 2005. Ribbons it is. The ones off chocs or carriers are far too short for wrapping anything, but just right for books and give you a chance to harmonise jacket and marker - I'm reading a P G Wodehouse book at the moment and found a lovely turquoise satin ribbon that is perfect for it.

they're lovely @Octoberaddsagale , a credit to you.

I’ve got an old coffee jar full of buttons which I’ve probably been adding to since I started knitting and dressmaking when I was a teenager (back when the Beatles were around). I always add any spare buttons on new clothes to it and it comes in very useful when somebody loses a button off a shirt etc.
Interesting buttons were a really big thing in the 70s with shops in Covent Garden and stalls in Camden Market. Designer knitwear and crafts e.g. Kaffe Fassett were very fashionable.
I’ve also got an old biscuit tin full of thread, needles, dressmaking scissors etc.
My mum also had exactly the same. I thought everyone had things like this or am I just old?
(P.S. if you’re into quilting etc, the Kaffe Fassett website has some beauties)

It saves time if I need a button in a hurry. I mostly sit in (am dram) theatre dressing rooms looking decorative and doing up zips, but sometimes buttons fall off during a show. Usually if it was me who sewed them on in the first place.

There is a theatre in the grounds of the Bluestocking estate, isn’t there?

(I is being misleading. I don’t take all those buttons to the theatre, just a small selection.)

The cabaret bar doubles as a theatre. Some of your very little buttons will be useful for the gerbil costumes.

Thank you 😁

I wonder do the gerbils sew? it would be useful if they could do Tailor of Gloucester style fine embroidery. And tiny buttonholes.

I've just sat down for a browse and a cuppa, having spent an hour or two PUTTING THINGS IN TINS!

Specifically modelling materials [the 'miniature objects' kind of modelling, naturellement]. I have a number of those tall ones that Italian biscuits come in, and I've found that laid horizontally they make excellent holders for longer items like beading and dowelling etc... [The wooden kind of beading, not the round necklace kind..]. gosh I wish I hadn't started this, it's so full of homonyms

I also keep buttons in a tin, and ribbons, and threads and tape, so I'm a fan. It's nice that you can buy something like a vintage tin and actually use it for something, unlike most of the stuff I buy just because I like the look of it..

I often change the buttons on new clothes, for nicer ones out of my tin. I call it buttonhacking, it can really elevate a garment.

Kaffe Fassett, you say? I store my (fake, homemade) Kaffe Fassetts in a chest at the top of the stairs. Must get them out ready for winter. I made them in the 1980s & still love them, though a few got turned into cat beds.

Ooh, I like those flower buttons top right.

I've just started making quilted hearts, to do IFAQH, & so many people put buttons on theirs that I'm starting to lust after fancy ones to go on the hearts.

https://www.ifoundaquiltedheart.com/faqs/

@DeanElderberry just right for books and give you a chance to harmonise jacket and marker

That’s style that I can only aspire to.

Oh, go on then. Let's break out the AI.

@Octoberaddsagale I asked it to make you windswept.

I keep ribbons from chocolate boxes rolled up with the Christmas decorations, we use them on the tree instead of tinsel (which goes round the base so it sparkles like snow). Throwing them to unroll them is one of the small things that makes life worthwhile 😃 winding them up again though...

Do you think a gerbil would do that for me?

@ifIwerenotanandroid , I have never been honoured in a Bluestocking photo, before. Thank you. The hair colour and the windsweptitude are perfect representations.

I’m a bit worried that the gerbils are being confined in an uncomfortable position by the silvery jackets, though. Look at the one visible set of tiny toes, straining to stand tall. Or are they suffering for my their art?

I do like a nice tin - my spools of sewing thread are in a Fortnum and Mason biscuit tin, and I made dh have some F&M tea, so I could have the tin to keep aniseed balls in. I am a sucker for nice packaging - boxes, tins etc - and have to be restrained from keeping every nice tin I find, because we’d end up on one of those hoarding programmes!

I think that might be two gerbils stacked one on top of the other.

The Quilted Heart project is an interesting one. I hadn’t heard of it before.

The tiny buttons and the flower ones are best for decoration rather than for fastening, I feel, but I hadn’t considered the role of wardrobe assistant for the gerbils. I must think on.