button up

What am I going to put my new  buttons on?  The big blue dragonfly goes on a hat that needs a little freshening up.  The red dragonflies - I dunno yet.  The fishies?  I don't need a project in mind to buy fishies.  I will keep them and love them and fondle them now and then.  They don't even need to be on display.  I'm happy that they will just be.

My friend, Tim Young, wants to paint some buttons.  Not with a rattle-can, but with a tiny brush.  He wants to paint miniatures on buttons.  He needs a brush so small that he's going to have to make it himself.  He's thinking, maybe 3 cat whiskers.  It's spring and cats will be shedding.  Tim, wanna post a snail mail address for folks to send the whiskers of their cats?

Buttons ARE nice to collect.  Unlike antique cars, they don't take up much space or require much maintainence.  Unlike paintings or rare stamps, they're not expensive.  Well, most of them aren't expensive. As with anything that people collect, if someone wants what someone else has, it becomes more valuable.  Serious button collectors can spend thousands.  That takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.  My buttons, like my tea-cups are items of fun, and the hunt is part of the pleasure.  I have even been known to buy a second-hand dress because I was so charmed by the buttons.

Since I enjoy mindless garter-stitch knitting bets of all (It's so meditative!) I often produce stuff that might be a bit boring or generic.  A single accent button pops it right out of the ordinary.  And when I knit those sweaters for the orphans, I like to think that a bright, whimsical button can make an ordinary warm sweater into something special.  And we all need something special, don't we?