Messy Tuesday

I feel I'm somewhat going against the spirit of Messy Tuesdays by posting a stage-managed picture of some mess, but it turns out that I'm far too vain to post the real mess currently engulfing me, and besides, this particular mess is a beautiful and interesting one, which I quite wanted to talk about anyway.

This mess is my embroidery thread box- but it's messiness precedes my ownership of it. It is one of the many textile related things I inherited from my maternal Grandmother. She (like me, as Flatmate Alice can testify) was a great saver of things. Among other oddments of hers I have a large bag, and several tins, of her odd buttons, a box of empty cotton reels, and this box, which I decanted from a bag, of her embroidery thread ends. There are also several boxes of full skeins of thread, all sorted into cottons, silks, etc, and arranged by colour, but I do not have those. I was never a big one for embroidery (to my her slight disappointment, as it was her favorite craft) and I only have this lot because I once rashly declared that I enjoy untangling thread, and my mother responded by presenting this bundle to me. As you can see, I got about halfway through before getting bored, not too bad! And in a way, I'm glad I didn't untangle it all. This is a mess that is older than me. Some of it is probably older than my mother. There is enough untangled to do what little embroidery I am likely to do, and enough left for the next person to untangle. Or add to.

(The fabric in the background is from my Paris trip, it's 3m of silk from La Folie des Coupons, and I think it will mostly be lining. Unless it turns out to be very, very frilly cocktail dress. You never know...)