Suzanne

For Sale: Homemade Ribbon Keeper.###My dad made this for my mom, so she could thread ribbons and cording through it, to keep it from tangling. When I was little, my mom used to make us Easter hats. Every year, she would say "Time to take a trip downtown!" and we would go to the millner's in an old building on Stanwyx Street, perhaps no longer there, to buy "millinery supplies" (I loved that store -- so many interesting nooks and crannies with oddly shaped things and dusty bits no other store ever sold (those fascinator head wear the Brits make come close)), and my sister and I would always end up with interesting "scrap bags" to make things for our Barbie dolls (25 cents a bag!). But my mom would buy ribbons and trimmings to make our Easter hats, ribbons she would sew round and round, on a head form (or our real heads!), until a hat (sometimes with a brim) appeared. The spools of ribbons, she always kept in a box, and would pull them out as she sewed, but they would tangle. My dad got the idea for this keeper because he was helping my uncle build a sailboat in his garage. The boat needed all kinds of cord keepers, which got my dad thinking. So he took some extra wood blocks from my uncle and made this for my mom. You open it, slide the ribbon in, so that as the ribbon pulls out, the keeper stays closed. The ribbons and banding my mother used for hats tangled much less when she used the keeper. If it's too narrow or too loose, you adjust the screws and maybe add or remove a washer for spacing.###I know people don't make hats that much any more, it's too easy to buy them from China. My mom's hands became too arthritic, and after the 70's, hats were just not the thing anymore (Catholic women didn't need to cover their heads in Church, after Vatican II, you know). My mom and dad have both been dead for seven years now (my uncle died more than a decade ago, and that first sailboat is long sold (he had to take out a garage wall to get the boat out, my mother's sister, my aunt was so mad -- but the boat was fun to sail (my uncle did much better with the second boat)). I am still cleaning out things I salvaged from my parents' house before it was sold. Neither my sister nor I make hats or things with ribbons. But if you do (maybe you make period costumes for plays or movies?), you will like this. It is smooth and will not snag the ribbons.###Price: $5