Where's the button box?

While I really appreciate at-your-fingers yarns to drool over (the internet listings don't really do it for me, unless I've fingered it in the flesh ...) in today's yarn stores, I have a real throw-back problem. Buttons.

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.

The whimsey scarf

A previous blog talked about dropping stitches while dropping rules of shoulds and oughts.

I am a 'go with the flow' kind of gal. My friend A is not. Just last week we'd had a cyber conversation about starting new knitting projects while there is an incomplete project on the needles. She confessed that she couldn't start a new one while she had a project on the needles and on the go.

As work in progress I already had 2 projects on the needles; one started and set up and two-thirds complete; the second, finally after many false starts (look to a future post relating to false starts) en route; and the third pattern decided and yarns bought and so ready to go. (And we won't count here other false starts and projects in progress from my experimental years).

And I'd promised Sarah her pink baby girl catch Cardigan. That was to be my weekend project.

So what happened when I went to John Lewis to find the yarn for the agreed baby knit?

I examined yarns for substitutes to the suggested American yarn for the cardigan and seriously discussed options. My decision was for a suitably pink organic wool and cotton yarn which I bought. But in passing I came across a couple of balls of half price Gelfrida fiorista yarn - and bought them too. The variegation of the colours was great. The feel and the flow of the yarn 88% cotton / 12% polyester was so soft and tactile. This was a yarn awaiting a project - it would become the Whimsey scarf.

For the catch cardigan I was looking for the yarn to fit the pattern. For the whimsy scarf I bought on spec. So more googling to find a pattern that would work for the yarn, and the intended recipient.

So what did I end up doing for my chillout and knit weekend? First I cast on and set up a completely different new project that was waiting but wasn't actually on the list to do now. The black angora bolero I had offered to knit for E where the yarn was ready and waiting.


Then I set about the baby Cardigan knitting. And then I went off piste to experiment with what I might do with the "whimsey". I had a couple of false starts where although the pattern was lovely, and the yarn would work - I'd have needed more than just the 2 balls that I had.

By the end of the weekend, the pink catch cardigan was complete. The angora bolera was started. And after a couple of false starts, the drop-stitch whimsey was well on its way.

I was a happy knitter. S loved both the baby cardigan - and her own scarf. Two finished. Three still on the needles. And A had just sent me more scarf patterns to drool over. Result, I'd say.

Pink and fluffy

How much is nature versus nurture? I am still surprised that I have raised a highly individual, talented and stylish daughter who is accessorised at all times. Her eye for style now lets itself loose on vintage design (thankfully more often the 30s - 50s era than my own 60s and 70s experiences).

Yet when I recall my teenager times in the late 60s in Lancashire, some of my favourite outfits were midi dresses and coats that I had "rummaged" from my grandmother and made my own. So there is a family tradition at play here.

For my current knitting Renaissance @hotchpotchuk (my aforesaid daughter) is a happy recipient of handknitted goodies. Here's a very tactile angora and silk chiffon ribbon shrug knitted in time for her graduation at Warwick university. Serious Dr E in hat, gown, 4 inch heels, and pink and fluffy shrug under the gown.













Although I bought a reel of pink chiffon ribbon, I ended up using black ribbon that I had liberated from a Christmas present wrapping. I'm enjoying incorporating some creativity into the finishing touches.

Knitted on 3.25 mm needles, 3 x 25gm balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Rowan Studio issue 17. Www.knitrowan.com

Completed January 2011 for E B.

Chanel jackets and Sindy dolls

Thankfully not everything about knitting is new to me. Would I find knitting relaxing if I had never done it before?

I'm not really sure how I learned to knit. I learned to sew on my mother's treadle singer sewing machine under her guidance but I don't remember her being a knitter. If she did knit it would have been out of necessity not desire.

My maternal grandmother knitted and crocheted; the annual Xmas box sent from Cardiff was a treasure trove of her year's output and included hot water bottle covers, bedsocks and other essentials for a chilly house in Lancashire.

I seem to remember that some of my early knitting projects were fashionable 1960's flared trouser suits and Chanel inspired jackets - for my younger sisters' Sindy dolls.

In my mind's eye I can still see the lime green suit in a fine moss stitch. But they were never as glamourous as the fur trimmed evening dresses - dolls sized - that my grandma had knitted for 'the little ones' (my sisters, as well as their dolls) and that appeared from the aforesaid box.

Starting a whimsical scarf pattern today I was instructed to drop stitches ... And then make more by the backward loop cast on method. What?

There's more than a small amount of daring and overcoming of resistance involved in deliberately dropping stitches. My upbringing was more make do and invisible mending than the later decades of ripped jeans and laddered fishnet stockings.



Dropping the stitch was easy once I had dropped the rules of upbringing. But what about backward loop cast on?



Easy with google! Within 90 seconds I'd viewed a YouTube tutorial and I was away again. Perhaps learning from scratch wouldn't be so hard.

Sarah's pink catch Cardigan

This weekend's project. Knitted in rowan belle organic aran 50/50 wool and cotton. Size 6mm needles. Original pattern from the Internet by d-made quickie baby sweater.

And yes it was quick. About 5 hours.







Still needs buttons - and my button tin is in France!

Postscript: buttons sourced and so the project is finished.

A return to knittery and stitchery

Coming back to knitting after a few decades of only intermittent knittery and stitchery does show how things have moved on. I've never been a diarist or consistent photographer or scrap-booker ... and have had various clear-outs of what at the time seemed like a whole load of baggage ... projects finished, projects started and abandoned, materials for projects that might happen one day.

Now I've come back to knitting and probably quilting, I regret not having the "vintage" stash to go through. Never mind, plenty of time from now to have fun in recording the projects - and some thoughts around them - as I go along.

One of my first tasks will be to find photos of the knitting I've been doing over the past few months so at least I can do a bit of catch-up.

But first - got to head out to buy buttons for Sarah's Pink Catch. Photo to follow.