culling treasures and the moon

First the treasures.  My friend Elisheva emailed me to ask if I would be interested in her husband's grandmother's stash of threads. Elisheva didn't know what was good and what should be tossed. She was kind enough to give me free reign to toss whatever I didn't want.

This box arrived in my house on Friday afternoon. In the box was a mix of spools.

I was not interested in the small spools of poly thread. those were easy to dump. I did want to show all of you a brief and terrible moment in sewing history, a Styrofoam spool

They were not manufactured for a very long time. There was a period in the 1970's when natural products were suddenly very expensive. Manufacturers tried out various substitutes. I guess it was getting too expensive to manufacture wooden spools, so Styrofoam  was briefly tried out.  Those spools tended to flake with use and become less than useful. Rigid plastic is now the spool of choice. I tossed this spool as well.

I did keep a selection of thread wound on wooden spools. Some were

Corticelli silk sewing thread. Corticelli was manufactured in Florence, Massachusetts. They manufactured silk sewing threads as well as embroidery threads and yarns.  Silk sewing threads were indispensable for fine nearly invisible sewing. 

Corticelli 

advertised heavily in women's magazines and sewing magazines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They produced patterns to use their threads and yarns. 

They even produced a magazine to encourage the use of their products. I love that I finally own some of their products.

Last night as my husband and I drove home sunset

and then the full moon were quite something.

Between the bumps in the road and attempting to take photos in a rapidly moving car with a camera which is not that great at taking night shots and through a windshield that reflects back light, you get the drama of what I was seeing but not the subtlety of the clouds flirting over the face of the moon.

  Trying to capture the magic of the moon kept me occupied in the car.

When I was little and my mother's parents were both still alive we often used to go visit them at their home in Spring Valley, leaving Quincy early Sunday morning, often before sunup and returning home at night.

I remember those many trips as being a mostly dozy twilight between car-motion induced naps. Crossing the George Washington bridge on the way home was always a moment of  note. I still feel that way as we cross the bridge to go home.

 I still love to pick out the Empire State Building as we cross the bridge. But now was I look at the lights of the city I know I am nearly home.