The Disappearing Threads, Needles and other things

My sewing lounge chair was very comfortable, a great recliner and it saw many projects stitched on it. However, it had one big failing. When I sat in it, of course it depressed the cushion, which meant that there were big gaps for things to fall down the sides into the innards of the chair.

And fall down they did! - scissors, pins, beads, pencils, but particularly threads! Those little thin bobbin squares were just the ideal size to disappear down my lounge chair. In the end, I left the stapled fabric underneath undone so that I could easily tip the chair up and extricate the latest thing to have slidden down.

Needless to say, I soon got sick of my threads disappearing, so when I saw a metal split hinged thread ring for sale, I immediately bought one as I figured it looked the next best thing since sliced bread - which it proved to be. All those threads on that ring just wouldn't slide down inside my lounge chair.

I loved my thread ring so much that I decided I could definitely do with a few more. The shop where I bought my first ring was no longer operating, so I did a search on Ebay and found them at a really good price and bought a packet of ten. So no more plastic bags full of threads, no more mixing up which threads went with which project and no more disappearing threads ... (and I've bought a new  lounge chair too!)

Then there were the disappearing needles. In spite of all the pretty pincushions I have made in the last ten years, I was still using the same old very ordinary one for everyday use. (Some times I get into the silly mode of thinking "This is too pretty to use on myself!") Well old faithful pincushion started wearing out at the seams so needed replacing. I like to use bran to fill my pincushions as I find it gives a good weight so that the pincushion doesn't fly off the arm of the lounge, and it keeps pins sharp. Now I didn't have any more bran in the cupboard, so I decided to reuse the bran out of the old pincushion. Of course I needed to check that there weren't any needles in the bran before I started to fill the new one 

and ...

OK - let's have some fun. 

Would you like to guess how many needles I found inside my pincushion? 

The prize for the closest guess will be one of my patterns of your choice. 

(If there are more than one correct answer, then I will draw the names out of the hat.) Leave your guess in a comment below and make sure I am able to contact you if you are a "No Reply blogger".

Competition closes midnight Saturday 9th May (Australian time).

I'm more sensible now with my pincushion and I don't put needles in it sitting out like a pin, but scoop them through the fabric so that they don't disappear inside!

Now onto other disappearing things. Did you notice I disappeared for a week or so? My husband and I were away on a birdwatching field trip with our local Birdwatchers' Club. We had a great time and saw lots of birds that we don't normally see and enjoyed the lovely company of our friends. Also spotted in a park in the little country town where we were based was this Koala:

Now that I'm back home, I've been disappearing into my sewing room and getting back on track with my projects. I finished this set of placemats for a friend:

 and had great delight in playing with this beautiful guipure for a wedding commission. (Show you more when its owner has seen it!)

Thankfully we didn't disappear on Friday when we had 7 inches of rain in 24 hours. Unfortunately, many people were less fortunate, there were many floods around Brisbane and five people lost their lives. Our main shopping centre looked like this:

Photo - Channel Nine News

We are thankful we and our families were spared to live another day.

I'm looking forward to seeing your guess on how many needles disappeared into my pincushion!

Val