in praise of hoarding

A few years ago the mother of a friend of ours passed away. She was a craftsy* woman and our friend was kind enough to let me go through her craft supplies to see if there was anything that I wanted, which of course there was.

This brings us to yesterday when I was cleaning out a cupboard, trying to create more storage space out of thin air and look what I found (again):

So lovely - the braid is 83mm wide and there is not quite a metre of it, the buttons I think are made of glass. They were both packed away in a little souvenir bag with line drawings of scenes that I recognised as being from Vienna (and a sticker that says Wien) so I gather that they came from Austria. That would be 50 schillings then for the buttons.

What shall I use them for? Craft-wise my mind always turns to things to make for baby bear. I have some black cotton velvet (recycled out of a skirt that I bought at the op shop) that I could perhaps make a dress from. Wouldn't the braid look lovely as a waist band?

The buttons are about the size of a 5c coin - perhaps a pale blue cotton cardi? I do have just the thing in Jo Sharp Soho Summer DK cotton, shade 218 Cloudless; yes, I have it hoarded away somewhere ...

* I prefer craftsy to crafty, to say that she was a crafty woman could be construed as an insult and it just reminds me of those Beastie Boy lyrics.