Grannymar

The other day I was replacing a button on the waistband of a pair of jeans. They were not mine and the lack of a button was due to a lost battle with an expanding waistline. The strain on the waistband where the button should be weakens the fabric and sometimes causes a hole. To overcome these problems reach for the button box, a sewing needle with a large eye-hole, three matchsticks, sticky-tape and Dental Floss!

Now if you have the original button your problem is halved, if not look for one that will neatly pass through the buttonhole. If a button slips easily through the buttonhole, then it is not large enough and will open every five minutes. If it needs force to go through then it is too big. Then pick a smaller flat button with the same number of holes as the larger one.

Next find a little masking tape or sticky-tape and place the three matches in a row and wrap them in the tape. For safety reasons used matches are best, we don’t need any burnt fingers! This match stack will be placed between the top button and the fabric to leave the threads long enough to form a shank. I made one of these about twenty years ago and keep it in the sewing box.

Select the length of Dental Floss and thread it on to the needle. I double the thread and knot the end of it. Attach the thread to the fabric with a double stitch and then push it through the smaller button on the underside of the waistband. Place the large button on the top fabric and stitch through the fabric and the button. Make sure to slip the match stack in between the fabric and upper button.

When you have stitched the buttons securely bring the needle up through the bottom button and fabric, remove the matchsticks and wind the thread around the threads between the fabric and top button to give extra strength and finally take the needle through to the back and finish off with a small double stitch.

Now you only have one problem, how to conceal the ‘white’ thread in the centre of a dark button. Use your loaf Rollerball or ink pen to darken it.

My photos are a little blurred, but they will give you the idea. I used a scrap of material with light coloured buttons and contrasting tread for the sample. Hopefully I make a better job of matching my colours in the normal course of events.

Will sent me a link about Obsolete Skills I was fascinated. I deleted about half of them, mainly the tekkie ones. AND the one about Cave Wall Painting. Huh! I certainly don’t go that far back!

I hope I cut all the repeats, but I have done all of these 109 things at least once!!

Now if my list is not enough you can always go back to the Blog Post.

Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV

Adjusting a television’s horizontal and vertical holds

Adjusting a television’s color and hue adjustments

Adjusting a clock’s pendulum

Analogue radio listening and tuning in

Calculating a square root using pencil and paper

Calculating sales tax?

Calligraphy

Cash Register used manually entering the prices

Changing the ball or ribbon on your Selectric Typewriter

Cleaning the balls inside a computer mouse for better traction

Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar

Counting back change

Operate a credit card imprinter (click-clack)

Cursive handwriting

Darning a sock

Faxing a document

Focusing a camera

Freethinking

Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set?

Getting to know your neighbors?

Going outside? (instead of editing pointless Wikis)

Hand crank a car to start it

Hand lettering large signs

Handwriting

Having Cash

Having your gas pumped for you and your oil checked at a full-service gas station

Knowing what part of town someone lives in by their phone exchange

Licking stamps or envelopes?

Lighting a kerosene lamp

Loading a reel to reel tape drive

Long-Distance Phone Calling

Long division

Look for a job in the classifieds

Looking up a business on the yellow pages

Making an operator assisted phone call

Making change in shillings and pence

Manually loading ink on a fountain pen from an bottle

Map Reading

Marriage?

Memorizing Multiplication Tables

Mailing in the order form of a catalog?

Operating an agitator washing machine and clothes ringer

Operating an Overhead Projector

Paying with cash?

Peeling the developer layer off a Polaroid?

Peeling back a lid from an sardine can with a key?

Percolating coffee

Playing marbles?

Polaroid photography

Putting a needle on a vinyl record

Quill Sharpening

Reading a dictionary or encyclopedia

Reading a paper map

Reading a Sundial?

Reckoning arithmetic without aid?

Remembering passwords

Remembering telephone numbers

Repairing small appliances? (replaced element in the Iron)

Replacing Shoe Sole and Heels

Rewinding an audio cassette using a Bic pen*

Ripping the little holes off the sides of the computer paper

Rolling down the car window

Selling something in the Classified Ads?

Sending a letter

Sending a telegram?

Sharpening a pencil

Starching a removable collar?

Spelling

Starting a car that has a manual choke

Thinking for oneself

Ticket Conductors on Buses?

Operating a Treadle Sewing Machine

Trim the wick on an oil lamp?

Tuning a radio

Typing and sending a telex?

Untangling the cord of a telephone?

Using a beer can opener

Using a bit and brace?

Using a bottle opener?

Using an ink blotter

Using an abacus

Using a compass

Using a fax machine

Using a flash bulb?

Using a fountain pen

Using a light pen

Using a Logarithm Table?

Using a manual choke in cold weather

Using a party-line telephone

Using a pay telephone

Using a pay toilet

Using a scythe

Using a slide rule

Using a Typewriter?

Using carbon paper to make copies

Using correction fluid

Using a mangle to dry clothes?

Walking long distances

Washing clothes with a washboard?

Watching a slide show with a slide projector

Wearing a girdle

Wearing a hat

Whipping cream with a whisk

Winding a watch or clock

Winding up loose cassette tape with a pencil eraser before putting the cassette in the deck

Worrying about important things?

Writing email whilst offline and going online to send

Writing using a dip pen and powder to dry up the ink?

Yesterday I was better value than Royal Mail. You had two posts, but now how do I follow that?

Struggling to think of a topic for today my email pinged. A new comment was added to the post Poor Mary. Now thanks to Magpie 11, I have found my subject!

I have been trying to find the origins of a saying of my Grandmother’s…

Q, “What’s for lunch Grannie?”
Her answer Three Jumps at the cupboard door the only reference I could find was by Grannymar on another site which led me here.
Can you help?

‘Three jumps at the cupboard door’ was a phrase I learned from my late husband. He grew up in Co Durham in the 1920-30’s and his mother used it regularly when he asked “What is for lunch or tea”.
All young children ask at some time when feeling hungry “What’s for (insert meal)?” Mother’s or Grannies gave the quick answer ‘Three Jumps at the cupboard door’.

It means any of the following:
“Away out and play and let me get on, or there will be no dinner!”
“Stop annoying me or you will have to make it yourself!”
“You will have to jump up to the cupboard and see what you can reach!”

Magpie came back with another phrase in the same vein:

‘Dried Bread and Scratch it’

This was from the days of poverty when children were given dry bread, sometimes several days old. The ‘Scratch it’ meant scraping at the lump of bread with a finger to loosen the crumbs. On good days they had dripping (fat from cooking meat) to dip the bread in for flavour and to let it soften.

And my mother had her own version

‘Potatoes and point’

Humorous as it is, it scarcely falls short of the truth. Prior to famine times many an Irish family, hung up a herring, or “small taste” of bacon, to smoke or dry (cure) over the open fire. Using their imagination each individual points the potato he is going to eat, at it, thinking the flavour of the herring or bacon will transfer to the potato.

Daddy often said “You are the apple of my eye!”

This phrase comes from the Bible. In Psalm 17:8 the writer asks God ‘to keep me as the apple of your eye’.

Another of Daddies sayings was “A little bird told me”

This phrase comes from the Bible. In Ecclesiastes 10:20 the writer warns us not to curse the king or the rich even in private or a ‘bird of the air’ may report what you say.

A bakers dozen

This means thirteen. It is said to come from the days when bakers were severely punished for baking underweight loaves. Some added a loaf to a batch of a dozen to be above suspicion.

That’s a load of codswallop

In the 19th century wallop was slang for beer. A man named Codd began selling lemonade and it was called Codswallop. In time codswallop began to mean anything worthless or inferior and later anything untrue.

“Go to pot”

Any farm animal that had outlived its usefulness such as a hen that no longer laid eggs would literally go to pot. It was cooked and eaten.

“To start from scratch”

This phrase comes from the days when a line was scratched in the ground for a race. The racers would start from the scratch.

Now you start from scratch and share a well worn old family phrase.

Now Ladies and Gentlemen just stop right now whatever you are doing!

Are you over 30? Nearly forty?

Then the signs are not good!

I was checking my RSS Feeder this morning and while reading through the postings of my regular blogging friends I came across this little Gem:

Facebook founder/media-golden-boy, 24-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, had this advice for aspiring technology entrepreneurs while speaking at a tech conference last spring “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical,’ he stated. ‘If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people with technical expertise… Young people are just smarter.”

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has a very interesting post on the ‘delights’ of Facebook with comments that stretch almost across the Atlantic. They are all worth reading.

I hope that in 20 years time some young buck still wet behind the ears, stands up at a meeting to remind Mark Zuckerberg of these words!

Maybe I will still be around to smile!

Something I found in the Elly’s old Bookcase

*We must tell our own stories, and we must tell the stories of others. If you don’t tell your own story, who will? Of course you know I advocate writing your story, but if you can’t write it, or won’t, then for sure tell it. Tell it often, so people don’t forget. It could matter.* this is the final line of a blog post by Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal.

The time to start telling the story is NOW! By the time most of us think of looking back to discover our history, it is too late. The people who have the information are gone. Gravestones and Registers only give dry facts. People bring those facts to life

My oldest brother was at the graveside of a beloved paternal uncle, when he suddenly realised it was too late to ask questions, and he had not paid enough attention to all the stories my uncle had told over the years. All those stories and facts were gone never to be retold. My brother then set himself a task of tracing and noting his family history and by passing on this information to me it opened a whole new outlet and hobby.

Gingerpixel used a wonderful photograph of work worn hands to tell the story of her Grandfather, when she was Guest Phototrapher/Blogger for Mr Irish Blogosphere himself Damien Mulley.

If you are fortunate enough to have parents and grandparents alive, spend some time with them and ask them to write down their memories. If they are not keen you interview them and write it or make a Podcast of them telling the story. The first stage is the most difficult, but once they make a start the memories come back and the stories start to flow.

Your children and Grandchildren will be pleased. Remember their lives will be as different to yours as mine is in relation to my grandparents.

Last evening I heard something scary. I was listening to the radio. BBC Radio 4, the Money Box programme. It is now back for a new season. I often find it informative. I have yet to discover how to get those old pennies out of my Money Box; they never seem to cover that topic! I might have to resort to a tin opener!

One of the topics last night told how some Credit Card customers are running into problems at hotels. They explained how one “standard practice” in the way card payments are reserved can sometimes affect your ability to spend. Perhaps you International Travellers out there are well aware of the practice. If not you can listen to the piece on the above link.

When a person checks into a hotel they are asked how they will be paying. Most of us now for simplicity and ease proffer our Credit Card. At that point the hotel *Earmarks* a sum of money to include the daily rate for the number of days we hope to stay, plus the cost of our anticipated spending e.g. breakfast, dinner and use of the Mini bar plus an extra to cover accident.

One caller told of his checking into a hotel, but later changing his mind for some reason and booking into another one. When He handed over his card at the second hotel he was told there was a problem. His limit was not sufficient to cover the bill.

He contacted his Credit card company and was told the first hotel had *Earmarked* £1500 to cover his stay and when he booked into the second hotel they wanted to *Earmark* a similar amount.

Another person checked into an Hotel as per normal and then went out for the remainder of the evening to shop and have a meal. The next time he tried to use his card it was rejected.

We learned that it is a common practice for hotels to do this, yet nowhere is it advertised or are we advised.

Now you are warned! Take note.

I wonder does my Elly know.

Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, and wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

This is a quiz for people who do!

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many Off Licence shops, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only three words in Standard English begin with the letters ” dw” and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter “S.”

Answers tomorrow.

How do you spell Constantinople?