Curiosities

It is a bit of a miserable day and so I have dipped into my cabinet of curiosities (aka an old shoe box) for todays blips.
The main event is a stone spinning whorl that I found in our garden. The local archaeologist was able to date it, without hesitation, to somewhere between 3000 BC and 2000 AD.  


The extra is an old powder puff, made from blue silk and swan's-down, stuffed with kapok and ancient straw and equipped with an ivory handle. It was used to powder my grandmother after her bath when she was a baby. Then it powdered my mother and her brother, then me, then our two Talpids and their three lesserTalpids.
The puff used to sit in a lacquered papier-mâché powder box but when the younger Talpid arrived his older sister flushed it down the toilet in a fit of jealousy!