My button habit

I had to rifle through my sewing supplies drawer this week, looking for some thread to sew up a hem. As I did so, I came across the button box.

The button box has been a permanent fixture with the sewing supplies for almost 20 years now. It is a small wooden, hinged box which I put any spare buttons into. Nowadays, the spare buttons usually come in a plastic bag or a paper envelope, attached to the garment. As I snip off the price tags, I put the buttons aside, and they eventually end up in the box.

Which is where they stay.

Forever.

I don’t think I’ve ever taken a button out of that box and sewn it onto anything. The only time I ever sew buttons back onto clothing is when I catch them falling off and sew them on, then and there.

Anyway, I had a bit of a look through the spare buttons in the button box and it was like seeing my life flash before me. There were some gold and black buttons from a 1990s suit that I remember I changed over for ‘more tasteful’ entirely gold buttons. There was a set of buttons with logos for the corporate uniform items I was required to wear once a year at the company’s AGM. There was a spare fabric covered button from a winter jacket. A large pink square button was a mystery. I have no idea what that came with. A lovely translucent black button for a cardigan I bought in New York last year came with a spare press stud.

One plastic bag contained about 40 spare tiny iridescent sequins. Yeah, like I’m ever going to sew those on.

There was a multitude of delicate small buttons in a variety of colours, the type that may have been off blouses or shirts perhaps.

So many of the buttons originally belonged to garments that have long since disappeared into the depths of charity shop collection bins.

So then I started wondering, why do I have this habit of saving the buttons when I know I won’t do anything with them?

I think the answer lies way back before our time. For generations, every household has had a button box. In frugal times, before worn-out clothing was torn up to be used as cleaning rags (in a time when clothes were worn until they fell apart), buttons were cut off and put into the button box.

When clothing was homemade, you would search through the button box for appropriate buttons rather than buying new ones. It was also the place you went to replace a vital missing button to extend the life of garment. Recycling at its best.

As a child, I took great delight in scrabbling through my mother’s button box. I would sort them into colours, or shapes. I can remember some crystal-look buttons that I was particularly taken with as they were so jewel-like.

My Aunt’s button box was like a treasure-trove of buttons, all sorted according to colour.

Playing with the contents of a button box is a fundamental milestone in a child’s development.

In the early days of my daughter’s schooling she was required to bring to school a container with “50 small objects” in it for counting games. Remembering my own childhood experiences, I turned to my button box and extracted 50 of the most interesting.

I think I continue to save buttons to the button box, knowing that I will probably never use them, because it is part of my cultural heritage. It’s one of those habits, like saving elastic bands, that I’m never going to break.

I'm sure many other people however, save buttons and actually use them.

Do you have a button box? Do you ever use the buttons?

A load of flummery

Flummery (n.)

1. A sweet, soft oatmeal based pudding

2. Meaningless ceremonies and nonsense flattery.

So there I was driving my car, stuck in slow-moving traffic one afternoon last week, when all of a sudden a word pops into my head.

Flummery.

For no apparent reason this word cavorted about, did a couple of cartwheels and disappeared, leaving me wondering, What exactly is flummery?

What I did know was that it is a magic word. Say it aloud and you'll agree. Flummery. It just tumbles off the tongue, and cascades over the lips.

But I wasn't so sure what the meaning of the word was. I had a vague idea that it was a type of dessert. Perhaps a fluffy, fruity one? I guessed there may be sponge involved?

So it was off to Google University to find out.

What I discovered is that 'flummery' means a lot of different things in different places and times. The flummery recipes on websites such as http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/ or http://www.taste.com.au/ look positively delicious: light, summery, fluffy concoctions full of fruit flavour and mostly set with gelatine.

Digging a little deeper however, I found flummery's origins were not so tasty.

According to the The British Food Trust's Great British Kitchen Cookbook, "Flummery occurs in manuscript menus for Scottish feasts as early as the fifteenth century. The ingredients varied but the basis was always soaked cereal, the liquid from which sets to a clear jelly". The base could be flavoured (usually with orange juice or rosewater) and topped with cream and honey and sometimes alcohol.

I found a recipe for what seemed to be a traditional Scottish flummery, such as would have been made and prepared before our time and I decided to give it a go.

I'm warning you, the making of flummery requires commitment. It's a three-day process.

Day One: Soak 75g of fine oatmeal in cold water (enough to cover), stand and leave for 24 hours.

Day Two: Strain off the liquid, discard. Pour 1.2 litres of fresh cold water over oatmeal. Leave to stand for another 24 hours.

Day Three: Strain liquid into a saucepan, pushing as much liquid out of the oatmeal as possible. Discard the oatmeal. Add the juice of two oranges, and 25g caster sugar. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, stir while simmering for 10 minutes until the mixture thickens...

After 20 minutes of stirring the simmering mixture I accepted it was never going to thicken, much less set. And besides, it seemed incredibly unappealing.

The next step of the recipe called for 150mls of double cream to be stirred through the cooled (thickened) mixture before pouring it into bowls to set.

At this point, I decided not to throw good cream after bad flummery and I abandoned my experiment.

This is not an unusual experience. I have had mixed results in the past with recipes from before our time that needed to thicken and set. Who could forget the bad blancmange that had the colour and consistency of snot?

I have a theory about this, which I welcome your comment on. My theory is based on absolutely no solid evidence or rigorous research, just pure hunch. I think that some of our ingredients don't necessarily have the same qualities as they may have had a century or more ago.

Is our oatmeal more refined than the 15th Century Scottish oatmeal was? Does ours contain less starches than are required to set the rogue flummery?

Has anyone ever made an oatmeal flummery that set? Or do you have other old recipes that don't work as well as they used to?

To honour all mothers

It's that time of year again...the day we celebrate and honour all our mothers, and the day we kick off the Great Mother's/Mothers'/Mothers Day Apostrophe Debate.

This time last year, the blogosphere was abuzz with opinions about where the apostrophe should fall.

Google "apostrophe in mothers day" and you'll find over 28,000 results. It seems a lot of us actually do care about this issue!

Last year, M of Easternmax had to get to the bottom of the dilemma. She wrote:

A version of Mother's Day is celebrated in many countries around the world on many different days of the year. A quick Google or Wikipedia search will tell you this. The most popular days are Mothering Sunday in the UK which is on the third Sunday of Lent and Mother's Day in many other countries on the second Sunday in May.

If your country celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May it is likely that you follow the US tradition inspired by the quest of Anna Jarvis, who wanted a 'holy' recognition of individual mothers and Julia Ward Howe, whose experiences of the American Civil War led her to call for the recognition of the role of mothers. Formal recognition of a Mother's Day as designated by Jarvis was was finally enshrined by the 1914 proclamation by then US President Woodrow Wilson.

The location of the apostrophe is part of the common debate which asks:

-Is it a day recognising your mother eg. Mother's Day
-Is it a day recognising all mothers eg. Mothers' Day, or
-Is it a day of/for mothers eg. Mothers Day

There are no winners here because all answers can be correct depending on your point of view.

My view is: don't argue, choose whichever one you are comfortable with.

However, if you are a stickler for the fine print you will notice that the Proclamation issued by Woodrow Wilson in 1914 was for a Mother's Day. This use of the apostrophe was apparently stipulated by Anna Jarvis because it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world. source: here

Anna Jarvis, in fact, trademarked the terms "Mother's Day" and "second Sunday in May" in 1912.

So, if your country follows the US designation then it is correct when referring to the day in its official capacity to write Mother's Day (unless an alternative proclamation has been made in your country).

You just NEEDED to know that, didn't you...

All of which seems to lead to the fact, you can call it what you like.

Before our time, in the Victorian era in Britain, Mothering Sunday was a day on which children who worked in domestic service could return to their own homes to visit their mothers and attend their home church. Even earlier, it was an annual day for all parishioners to return to their "mother" church, (i.e. the one in their home parish) if they had moved away from it.

Early last century, when Anna Jarvis in the United States began her campaign of lobbying prominent businessmen and politicians to create a special day to honour mothers it was with the intention of creating a celebration of the importance of women and their work inside the home, as mothers. She intended that children would visit their mothers and attend church with them, or perhaps write letters if too far away to visit.

Almost immediately, she became quite concerned about the commercialization of Mother's Day as she had wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit. She opposed the use of greeting cards: "a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write." (source)

One wonders what Anna Jarvis would think of the 'celebration' that Mothers' Day has become now? Retail catalogues try to convince us that every mum wants needs fluffy slippers, dressing gowns, books, chocolates, flowers, jewellery, digital cameras, kitchen appliances and cosmetics.

Restaurants and cafes are packed as families take their mothers out for indulgent lunches.

The retail, food and entertainment sectors see it as a huge marketing opportunity and, obviously, a successful one.

Perhaps, along with the rogue apostrophe, Mothers Day has lost its true place?

How do you celebrate Mothers Day/Mother's Day/Mothers' Day/Mothering Sunday?

Modelling healthy body-types

“We are to be a pretty shape this Spring and for many seasons to come it seems. No more top-heavy shoulders balanced perilously by narrow hips and stilt heels, but the true shape of a woman, curving in at the waist from rounded bosom and hips. A shape, at last, with balance.”

Glamor. The Magazine for Young Women. September, 1947 p. 33

Looking at photos of the models on the runways of the recent Sydney Fashion Week and Melbourne Fashion Festivals I was struck by how impossibly thin they all seemed. At an average of somewhere between 5’9” and 6’ in height and a dress-size of 6 to 8 (Australian , which converts to UK 4-6, US 2-4) the models represent a body type seen on only a tiny percentage of the wider population.

As the mother of daughters, I worry about the representation in today’s media of this waiflike body-type as an ideal.

It is a concern shared by some of the world’s fashion shows. In 2006, the Madrid Fashion Week organisers put a BMI (Body Mass Index) limitation on models taking part. As a result, five models were turned away.[1] Fashion shows in other parts of the world haven’t been so keen to act, mostly adopting voluntary guidelines.

Fashion models haven’t always been so thin. Before our time, in the 1930s and 1940s they were even what we would now describe as voluptuous.

The 1960s was one of the major turning points in the idealisation of being thin particularly following the rise in the career of Twiggy, a waifish fashion model who weighed just 90lbs (41kg)[2]. Studies of the way women are portrayed in the media have shown that models became taller and thinner between the 1960s and the 1980s.[3]

In the 1990s the ‘heroin chic’ aesthetic was adopted. Models looked thin, miserable and exhausted.

Nowadays, models are thin and sullen. Heaven help the catwalk model who cracks a smile.

Is it any wonder that teenage girls struggle with body image issues when the media surrounds them with images that are almost impossible to replicate (and that’s without even starting on the issue of the digital retouching of photos).

How do you think we could bring the happy, healthy body-type back into the mainstream media and the fashion industries?

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/09/13/spain.models/index.html
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21232157-5001021,00.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy

[3] Body image: understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women, and children By Sarah Grogan. Published by Routledge, 1999
Accessed via: http://books.google.com/

(photos of Glamor magazine, September 1947)

Things my elders taught me: knitting

Today, it's the turn of another Before Our Time reader - The Mof- to share her memory of a skill learnt from our elders (parents, grandparents, teachers, friends...). If you would like to be added to the line-up, email on beforeourtime@bigpond.com - Megan and Alison.

My mother was a beautiful knitter and always seemed to have something on the needles. I expect she had to with a family of eight children- and in cold Scotland!

I was keen to learn this art and I distinctly remember learning to knit from my mother at the age of four. I had blue needles and burgungy wool. It was a challenge as I was left handed but I cottoned on quickly and learned to knit right handed.

My Mother had a little poem to teach children knitting which went:

"In the little bunny hole (needle into the front of the stitch)
Round the big tree (wool round back needle)
Out through the bunny hole (pull the loop through with point of needle)
And off goes she" (slip the stitch onto right hand needle)

I have used this myself when teaching children.

In primary school there was a syllabus of knitting which started at age seven. An itinerant sewing and knitting teacher came round our group of country schools. I think it was once a month as it took all year to complete each project. We were not allowed to take the project home until the end of the year - I can see why as I would have had it finished in a couple of weeks!

At the age of seven (my third year at school) we had to knit a pot holder. It was made of four 6 inch squares folded in diagonally to the centre and stitched, then padded with old towelling. The teacher then crocheted round the outside and made a loop to hang it up. (We were never taught how to crochet at school.)

At age eight we made a scarf with two colours alternating, in garter stitch. Mine was emerald green and scarlet. (I hope my colour sense has improved! )

At age nine it was time to learn purl (but of course with my early start I was well versed in that!) and we had to make mittens.

Age ten it was into socks, learning to turn a heel and graft the toe.

So by the age of eleven I was knitting cardigans and jumpers not only for myself but also for my little brothers.

The Mof, aged 10, wearing a cardigan she knitted herself.

It was dark brown in colour and had an all over pattern

of alternating plain and purl stitches making a raised texture.

I will be forever grateful that my mother was a knitter and had the patience and willingness to teach me the skill as, like her, I always have something on the needles even if it is just using up oddments for squares for charity blankets.

Arriving in outback Australia in the 1960s as a new bride was a culture-shock of a grand scale for a Scottish country lass, but The Mof took it all in her stride. She lives in a country town in Western Australia where she is involved with a variety of community groups. She loves to read blogs, but doesn't have one of her own (yet) and she hasn’t owned a dishwasher for nine years.