What's with buttons - tiny, plastic, not very nice - at a minimum of .20p a go? I'm sorry. Where's the button box of yesteryear?
The button box was not just to be raided for knitting or sewing projects. It was the staple for Christmas (and other occasions - if we were lucky) gambling card games. No button box - and no real gaming. Pasta shapes do not work. Nor do plastic poker chips. Nor penny coins, whatever the currency. Yes, there was a frisson on Christmas day itself when there might be some sweets around to play for the instead of aforesaid share-out of the button box. But all gamers know that it's the winning of the game, not the buttons or the sweets, that's the real prize! And anyway, in my family, the easy pickings players knew better than to gamble away their sweets. They'd rather do the washing up!
Yet there was such a ritual to choosing your favourite 3 pieces for Chase the Ace; or your 20 pieces for Newmarket (and you card players of mixed gaming heritage - don't invite me along to facilitate the agreement of house rules for Newmarket or the like. Now, I know better. You'll find me nursing a large gin, or doing the washing up!). And winning, for me, in Pontoon, was all about getting the best buttons.
Not cribbage, of course, we didn't need the buttons here. This was another of the domains of Sam, my maternal grandfather. The cribbage board had as its markers spent matches. And I'm now pretty sure that when I won, it was because Sam was as adept at throwing the game that mattered as he was at winning it. That's a true grandfather gamer!
It was the button box, everytime. My mother's button box was a 1950's (I think) baby milk tin. I'd know it if I saw it. Blue writing on white. Probably given free on the health service.
The charity shop bin bag has its downsides. What's the ethics of chopping the buttons off the garment that's due for the charity bag just for the button box? Of course you can't - because then the garment would just be junk.
But oh, the sadness now of knowing that before the age of vintage revival, most of what you gave to the charity shop ended up in landfill - what about the buttons?
Of course, whenever you needed a full set to finish a project - sod's law said that the button box would only give you 3 of 5, or 4 of 6 ... never enough. And you couldn't change the pattern to suit the button box? Could you? No, of course not.
But these days - thank goodness - buttons are more often bling, finishing touches, part of the creativity not the functionality. But at what price for plastic?
I don't know about you - but I so regret the buttons that went to landfill and the button box that could now be a treasure trove of remembrances of times past ...
So, my friends, and my metaphysical soul sister The Kisser of Frogs, think button box before you commit your torn and shredded garments to the landfill. And if you have buttons that are in want of a good home - let me know, send them to me, and they might well feature in a future project. Or pass them over to a fellow knitter and stitcher.
