The hat boxes

The hat boxes have needed cleaned out for a while. As is the way with storage boxes they had become more and more stuffed with stuff! The stuff wasn't hats. I use these boxes for some of my sewing and temari-making things. There is a fourth, the smallest one, which is upstairs with boxes of fabric scraps. As it happens, only the middle two sized ones got a clear out today because during a break in the very heavy rain showers, I went out to do a spot of hedge hacking.

fuchsia & rhododendron ponticum 'trimmings'

The first box I tackled contained, among other things, bits of elastic and curtain tape, old, clean wool socks that provide temari filling, and the badge off Toadlet's first school sweatshirt. When DerbyshireDaughter and DivingDaughter were at that school there was no uniform. Nobody batted an eyelid when DerbyshireDaughter went to school one summer day wearing a teeshirt of mine as a dress. Toadlet only went to the nursery class there and the reception class and then we moved up to Scotland. She remembers the deep maroon uniform colour as brown and she hated it.

old socks

I've made enough room in that box for my jar of thread bits. When I'm making temari I drop all the thread ends into a jar and it makes a pleasing muddle of colourful strands. Every now and then I have a rummage through it for a particular colour that I've run out of and need a short length of.

I like the almost nest effect

The jar with a small temari and a couple more below. Check out temarikai.com for history and more info.

So! Back to the hat boxes! The next guddle stuffed into one of them was leftover embroidery wools (loosely called tapestry wools). I think I can find a use for these at Oasis. I can wind them into small balls for M3 who likes to change the colour she is knitting frequently.

Next, all the needles came out. I have quite a collection (there are more upstairs) because I inherited some from an aunt. The packet in the bottom left corner of this pic has the price 9d on it, so its vintage is pre-1971. I have not identified the use of some of her 'needles'. Does anyone recognise the two below and know what they are for?

They were in the packet shown but I don't think  that was their original packet. I've now slotted them onto the same card as some other varied purpose needles.

The other two hat boxes will have to be tackled another time.






Meanwhile the woodshed rose, Albertine, which I can now smell if I stick my nose right into a bloom, is thriving as usual.

Vinegar ice-cream

pic from Wikimedia Commons

Long ago, in pre-Toadlet times, Toad and I took two Bangladeshi kids I was tutoring to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Afterwards we went along to "G & D's" (George & Davis' Ice-cream Cafe) on Little Clarendon Street.

I remembered this event today when I began to tuck into my second wedge of apple streusel cake, this time with some added homemade chocolate sauce (melted chocolate and double cream, essentially – the low fat mantra never caught on with me) and vanilla ice-cream.

Because...

...when I was reading out the available ice-cream varieties for Tanni and Robbie, Tanni must have misheard vanilla as vinegar. She asked for vinegar ice-cream and I, mishearing her in turn, accepted that with a perfectly straight face. It was only afterwards that Toad told me she had said vinegar and obviously wondered why it was called that! Brave girl to have chosen it in that case!

Anyway, ever since then vanilla ice-cream has been vinegar ice-cream in my mind. And so, this afternoon I had a slice of apple cake with 'vinegar' ice-cream and chocolate sauce. Very nice it was too.