More Buttons, No More Hauntings

Yesterday the Costume Museum of Canada held a button sale at a local sewing shop.

I went....and I bought.

There were lots and lots of very beautiful and interesting buttons. Sadly the museum decided last minute that rather than sell off ALL of it's buttons, it should make displays out of the best ones and only sell off the next to best. So, the two women staffing the event had to decide right there and then what was allowed to be sold and what wasn't. There were many things that I picked up and ogled, but had to put right into the bag of display buttons (one in particular was a lovely big bag of mother-of-pearl belt buckles).

*sigh*

However, I'm looking forward to going into the museum some other time to see them all sorted and posed to be admired.

***Please note, they're looking for people to help with this project, so if you love buttons and are here in Winnipeg, then give the museum a call and they should be able to put you through to the person in charge of this.***

These weren't the least expensive buttons I'd ever seen, but the funds raised were going to support the museum, so I forked over the cash. Here are my catch(es) of the day:

Some vintage/old black glass - my favourite are the square ones, perfect condition Art Nouveau,



More vintage glass, in charming colours,



A few plastic, I liked the shape of these,



Two vegetable ivory, these buttons are always in colours that are not me at all, but there's something about them I just love,



A group of metal,



This Italian one makes me laugh, it says "Attention, Forbid Access to the Person Not Authorized". Sounds menacing, but it's a fairly modern, cheaply made button, probably from the end-of-the-Cold-War 80's,



There were lots and lots of lovely mother-of-pearl,



And some more, I would have bought lots more if they'd been more affordable,



I love buttons. Love them, love them, love them.

Also this week, I ventured off into the world of yarn dyeing. This is quite a popular pasttime amongst knitters these days, and I thought it was about time I gave it a try.

Late last year I bought 10 skiens of Jaeger Aqua cotton yarn online. Colours can sometimes be deceptive on a computer screen, and "Muse" which looked to be a pale shell pink, turned out to be more of a salmon/coral colour when it arrived.



Not a terrible colour, but not a good colour on me. I'd bought some Procion MX dye in Fuschia, and set to work. I hadn't dyed anything in a very long time and forgot to buy the dye fixative (soda ash), so after stirring the yarn in the dye bath for 50 minutes, I started rinsing the dye out, and quickly realised that way too much of the dye was going down the drain. I abandoned the yarn in the sink, ran out to Artist's Emporium, raced back home and threw the yarn into a second dye bath. I didn't stir it this time though, I just let it lay there soaking.



I'm very pleased with the end results. Very bright fuschia, but with a streakyness, very summery, I think.



And lastly, an update on our haunted landing, mentioned here and here. After setting out crystals and having a "chat" (really more of a rant) with whatever was killing off my houseplants, I wondered if our visitor was still lingering in the house. Shelagh, whose husband has a gift for this kind of thing, suggested that I put out some letters and see if the ghost wants to send a message.

I put out all the Scrabble tiles (except the blank ones - if I get a message from beyond, I want it good and clear) and left them on the windowsill of the landing.



After two days, this is what it said,



Perhaps I should have mentioned to Ian and Nigel that they weren't the one's I was trying to commune with.