There is something rather lovely about wooden cotton reels...
...But what do you do with the empty ones?
Knowing they must be of some sort of crafty use, I had a go at fashioning a thrifty felty pincushion with some scraps...
It's a little bit wonky but perfectly functional. I normally keep my pins in a teacup during a sewing project, but recently kept finding that I would jab my fingers every time I reached in there for one. Now I'm keeping needles and cotton reels in a teacup and making use of a pincushion for pins. You know, like normal people do.
I have a bit of a thing for toadstools at the moment. When I was small I had a book of children's short stories by Ruth Ainsworth, and in one a boy made a toad house in a hollow at the foot of a tree in his garden, including damp moss to keep visiting toads cool, and a toadstool for them to sit on. Being exactly the sort of child who would do that sort of thing myself the story stuck in my mind, and for some reason I've thought of it a lot lately.
What do you use cotton reels for?
