Someone else’s grandmother’s button tin
How weird is it that my great grand kids will be able to look me up online? Will there be an ‘online’ at that point? Or will it be more like having to dig up the archives of the 8 track tapes in a dusty treasure trove of personal effluvium in an outdated medium. I mean, if someone were to hand me all the film reels from even my mom’s childhood I would have to try fairly hard to find a way to watch them.
You want a WHAT projector? you mean like those things in movies where the round disks of film whirl around and there’s a lightbulb?
Maybe we’ll all have given up on this internet insanity by then and we’ll be back to bicycling to the local green grocer to pick up our preserves. or whatever.
I mentioned in a recent post that I have my grandmothers button tin. I loved the button tin when I was a kid. Do all kids love a button tin? Do they all love to pick through the colorful buttons just admiring the colors adn the feel of them?Maybe imagining where they came from or things we could use them for?
The thing is, some jerkwad took all the good buttons leaving the all the very boring ones behind. It’s okay, whoever did it will get their comeuppance in HELL. So what did I do? DUH! I went online and bought someone else’s grandmothers button tin. it satisfies my hearts desires. I have started sorting by color. but I COULD sort by size or usefulness or type (shank, 2 holes, 4 holes, extra fancy) or by project. I can reorganize these suckers every damn day if i want. so maybe I will.
But I am conflicted. PArt of me wants to cram them all willy nilly into the button tin (although, at this point, with all my own buttons, my grandmother AND some else’s grandmother I don’t think they will all fit in one tin) . If they are all willy nilly then i have the kids pleasure of sort thing through it and seeing it as a tin of TREASURE. But as a grown up that isn’t super useful. I need them sorted and organized in some way, possibly even in separate containers. Right now all the blues and greens are in an old jam jar. and the sparkly ones with rhinestones are in an old burt’s bees green goddess mask jar.
I’m a magpie and love shiny things and seriously these buttons give my soul a deep down delicious rich feeling. Is it just me? Or does everyone love a button tin?
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August 26, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I have a mason jar that I fill with buttons that I’ve collected. Mostly from new clothes that get bought.
But I love having them in a see-through jar so you can see all the colors and textures. And the noise they make when you shake the jar!
August 26, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I ( heart) button jars. I remember as a kid unscrewing my mom’s glass mason jar full of them, and spending hours trying to find all the matching buttons while my mom was sewing. I’d try to cput all of the buttons that matched together on a safety pin, or strig them together on a thread. But most of all I remember the *smell* of that jar. I’d litaerally unscrew the top and then just bury my nose in the top. LOVED it.
When I moved to Cali, I started my own button jar (waaay classier tha the ziplock bag I’d been using to date.) I ended up using an old applesauce jar. But it just didn’t smell the same. In fact, it mostly smelled like rotting apples, so I took all the buttons out and re-washed the jar.
A few years ago I tried to instill a love for buton jars into Mags, but she pretty much had no interest. Maybe I’ll try again this fall/winter. when its pouring outside and we need something else to do. I hope someday she can appreciate the joy of sorting through all the different colors and shapes just for the pure joy of it. God knows I still do.
August 27, 2008 at 7:53 am
i need a button tin.
August 27, 2008 at 11:49 am
Yes! well obviously I loved this same one! there were a lot of good ones. I would sort them all out and sort of rank them by how cool they were. Gold ones, ones with velvetiness or rhinestones, were the queens. then the rest varied. I think anything marbled or dark red or green, or otherwise fancy was middle ranking. And the plain little white and black buttons were the peasants.
I also like a penny jar. I used to dump them all out from that big glass jar and pick out the wheat pennies.
August 27, 2008 at 11:50 am
The fancyness of the tin added to the whole thing. I assume it was a fruitcake tin! does it have a brand name or anything on it? on the bottom?
August 28, 2008 at 11:41 am
When my brother and I were little and we went to visit my grandparents, the order of events was always FIRST go on the swings in the back yard; SECOND, play with the button tin. We loved the buttons. I have them now, but there are way fewer; I don’t know what happened to the others, but the box went through several family members before it came to me.
September 3, 2008 at 7:59 am
Haha, remember when you were little and you went inside a circular rack of Liz Claiborne clothes? When we left the store, you had ALL the extra packets of buttons from the clothes!! I was horrified but did not know what to do! Take them back and confess? Oh, no, I don’t think so
:P I actually don’t remember what I did about it. (mind frozen in horror – but still thinking it was pretty funny)
May 6, 2009 at 4:18 am
Hee, button tins! I’m not sure if there was a tin, but there was some sort of container. Good stuff.