The rubber wars

A war has broken out where I live. Each woman for herself. Each out to prove she can be the biggest, most bouncy, the most elasticated. It's the war of the elastic rubber band balls.

As you know I am a compulsive picker-upper of rubber bands. I wind each band found onto my rubber band ball which is getting bigger and bigger but not at the exponential rate that I think it should be. Am I imagining it but are the surrounding streets just a little tidier and bereft of the little elastic twangy things.



Is this a rubber band I see before me?

Ha ha...first of all my friend, J, reveals herself. We are out walking and she stoops down before I have the chance to pick up a band. She takes it for herself. She takes it for her own rubber band ball. Apparently she and her daughter are active rubber band picker-uppers now.

Then I go see my friend, N, last night and she reveals her huge rubber band ball to which she and her friend are adding daily as they do their constitutional.

It's a thing of honour now to clean up the streets and to create the biggest monster of a rubber band ball. Whose will bounce the highest? Whose will get so large the bands will ping off?

Actually it's great that it's caught on, admittedly just between the three of us but we are doing our bit. I urge you to start your own rubber band balls but be careful it can get obsessive.

I think I'll call us the Robyn Hoods - after all we are a merry 'rubber' band of women! Oh I hear you groan - other suggestions welcome.

Rubber band ball update 4

The rubber band ball continues to grow. Got a friend collecting them now and she collected twenty bands on one walk the other day - shocking!

Handmade Histories 2: Crow cushion

Crow Cushion (Fruitique:Sonya)

This is my cushion. Foremost I like it because my good friend made it for me. Secondly I like it because it's beautiful but slightly menacing. No chintz here thank you very much.

One of the most memorable films I've ever seen is Hitchcock's The Birds. Very thrilling and very very menacing and this cushion reminds me of it. I'm also fascinated by the film because of Tippi Hedren's wardrobe. The films spans a weekend (Fri to Sat) and she wears the same tight fifties pencil skirt and high heels as well as beautifully coiffured hair all the time without looking dishevelled at all......that is until the last few scenes!!!! But the cushion also simply puts me in mind of a common garden bird. Depends what mood I'm in.

A garden bird or menacing crow?

It sits on the chest-chair-cum-table at 88 that came from my parent's house a few months ago. It sits next to its companion, a stag cushion, also made by Sonya. I love stags.

I'm into recycling so the cushion also appeals to me because it's mostly made of upcycled materials. In particular the dark grey in the background is made from a length of suit material my mum got from her cousin's woollen mill in the eighties. I can remember going and mum's cousin giving her it. I love it because it has  'Superfine All Wool Made in England' running down the side of the cloth which Sonya has incorporated running down the side of the cushion. The yellow ric rac (technical term - who'd have thunk that that was what it was called), squaring off the cushion, was passed on to Sonya years ago by a friend's mum. On the back of the cushion there is some corduroy which I do believe had a former life as a pair of Sonya's Levi's....better still originally bought from a charity shop. The button may be from a stock she inherited from her Gran but hey it's hard to keep track of buttons.



Amazing what you can do with a pair of old jeans

My stag and my crow make me happy and comfortable. Perhaps I need a pink moose to complete the set.

Handmade Histories 1: Red Keyring

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