Vintage needle case

(I've now caught up with all my back-blips, if anyone wants to know...)

"Vintage" actually means twenty years old, or more. So this aretefact is double-plus vintage...

I found it during my house-clearing period in the summer. My mother had got me some binca canvas when I was around six years old, and helped me to make a needle case for my grandmother and a padded glasses case for my grandfather. As their birthdays are but a month apart, I must have been working flat out!

The needle case was never used by my grandmother Bimbi (who didn't want to be called granny) but preserved along with the accompanying letter, which reads:

"Dear Bimby
I am verry sorry that your birthday present is so late But I could not get it finished intime love Helena"

Having been the recipient of several hand made presents and letters from children, I now realise she must have been chuffed to bits! Bimbi died in 1986 and the needle case returned tm my mother's care. She moved out of her house, but didn't take anything much with her. In her will, Bimbi left her button box to her youngest nephew, H, because he loved to play with the buttons.

Today I attempted some machine sewing (hence the blip-theme). I can honestly say that I'd rather visit the dentist than try to machine-sewing. Threads seem to break, bobbins run out, needles need re-threading, and I have to keep switching things round when I realise for the millionth time that I can't use the machine left-handed, much as I'd like to. It's actually a great little machine, it's me that's the problem. Anyhow, I made the fire-screen-cover-thingy that I had been meaning to make for months, but not out of fabric. With me, I start with one idea and set of resources, and end up with something completely different.

My friend Eileen and her daughter are coming over tomorrow, to see Bomble (not us!) so no doubt I will be cooking with apples again, for lunch. and I might even attempt another paperwork project that looks fiendishly complicated. Eileen might be able to help me understand the diagrams!

I was supposed to be going out to a play tonight, but I seem to have given both of us a very mild case of food poisoning (!) so I stayed in and did some more cooking, with different ingredients this time, and made some ginger infusion, which is little short of miraculous in its healing properties.