Beads and Quacks!

On Monday my neighbour tapped on the back door, holding a yogurt pot, an old jar and two old tins.  "I'm having a clear out," she said "can you use these?  They're left over from my college days."
"Ooh yes please," I replied, not even knowing what they contained but knowing that she did a textile degree.

And what did they contain?

All kinds of wonderfulness!  Old beads, new beads, old bits of jewellery, sequins, buttons and threads.

On a sadder note, her ducks (who personally wrote me notes and gave me eggs) met a very sad and brutal end on Friday night when a fox got into their run - no further details required.  We were both very upset and as she hadn't got any recent photos of them I decided to make her a little picture of them.  I had some of their feathers that I'd collected in the summer when they moulted and happily stitched away for a few hours.  But actually giving a textile picture to someone with a textile degree turned out to be harder than I'd imagined and I then spent several more hours getting colder and colder feet about it.  Eventually I plucked up some courage and gave it to her - fortunately she seemed genuinely pleased with it and quite touched that I'd spent the time making it.

Hinge (on the right) and Bracket (on the left)

Quack Quack!