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Idea #1: Small red heart-shaped bag, zipped around the edge similar to the Purlbee heart shaped pouch tutorial except I was thinking I'd make them from red felt and embroider them. Mine will also be smaller and the "handle" section will be a small loop so they can be attached to something else. This is what I wanted the red zipper for.

Idea #2: Pants! I saw these super funky black cord pants on Etsy while looking for something else and then later that night had a brainwave. I have some pairs of lovely wonderful comfy black jeans which are just a bit too narrow for me. I also have a glorious wonderful colourful quilt made by my aunty many years ago, and it's so old it's falling apart. I can split the outside side seams on the black jeans and add a strip made of patches from the quilt fabric. Bingo: New use for quilt, newly comfy jeans. Very enthused by this idea.

And a poll ... once I had the pants idea I thought I'd sit down and cut some of the fabric out to use for that so I went to find my seam ripper.... and I can't. My seam rippers disappear with frightening regularity ... somewhere in my house there is a secret seam ripper stash with twenty of those little guys all gloating about getting out of work!

I have this idea that every regular crafter has at least one thing they regularly lose ... what's yours?

Poll #8980 What Craft Tool Do You Lose?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

View Respondents

I lose my...

seam ripper
10 (45.5%)

knitting needles
1 (4.5%)

crochet hooks
3 (13.6%)

scissors
15 (68.2%)

sewing needles
11 (50.0%)

entire project! It takes talent...
6 (27.3%)

I never lose anything, I'm totally 100% organised!
0 (0.0%)

I lose something else which I will tell you about in the comments
11 (50.0%)

TICKYBOX
11 (50.0%)

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From:

azurelunatic

Fucking thumbscrew for the sewing machine.

Sewing needles are problematic when lost on the floor.

I have managed to pause the mass scissors exodus by crocheting tethers for them that can be wrapped around the handle on the one end, and the handle of the sewing basket (bag, etc) on the other.

From:

Your sewing machine has thumbscrews?

I don't lose sewing needles so much but I do it with straight pins a lot .... usually recovered via bare feet, of course.

The scissor thing is a good idea too, I think I'll try attaching them with leftover Christmas ribbon since I have some around. *plots*

From:

azurelunatic

There's this one little screw that holds the needle in place. I seem to never have the right combination of time, energy, budget, wakefulness, and transportation overlapping the local sewing machine shop's hours and days of operation.

From:

I think rb had the same thought I had.

From:

Yup! Evil, we are :)

From:

synecdochic

I have eight billion fabric tape measures in this house, and yet I can never find a single fucking one.

I also lose pliers. I'm not sure how; they never leave the crafting table. (Okay, the reason is that the crafting table has a lovecraftian shambling pile of stuff that eats anything that gets near it, but still.)

From:

afuna

Oh god, tape measures. I have about half a dozen, and I keep losing everything except one very specific one. When I get down to that last one, I buy a couple new ones just in case I lose that last one, and then promptly lose all the new ones.

I'm convinced the old one is eating the new ones.

From:

jesse_the_k

Whenever I go to a Big Box Craft Store (Michael's, Hobby Lobby, etc) I check for house-brand tape measures. They usually have them, and they're often two for a dollar. Six pack is enough to ensure that there will always be one in the same zipcode.

From:

I love your carnivorous tape measure theory!

From:

afuna

it's the only thing that makes sense!

From:

I do recall at one time friends and I had a complicated theory which involved ballpoint pens being the larval form of wire coat hangers (which at the time kept appearing out of thin air).

Unfortunately that theory's shot now - the wire coat hangers disappear too!!

From:

afuna

Obviously they have a third stage in their life cycle!

From:

acelightning

there was am old science fiction story - i don't remember the name, but it might have been by Fritz Leiber - in which an alien life-form's larval form was paper clips, which morphed into wire hangers, which morphed into bicycles. i don't remember what the bicycles - the adult form - did, but it probably wasn't nice...

From:

Losing things without them leaving the workspace takes special talent, I'm impressed by that.

I always have to spend ages finding my fabric tape measure but it's never been 100% lost so far.

From:

dadi

Pliers! THere must be a sekret hideout for them somewhere!

From:

Hmmm ... I don't have any decent pliers, only the old rusty chunky ones in my toolbox, so perhaps they don't think themselves worth being lost??

From:

tyger

Pins. The entire tin! All gone! And, you know, that thing I've had lying around for ages and just thought of a use for...

From:

Straight pins yes! I keep losing them by the entire container too ... I did get a lovely hedgehog pincushion for Christmas though so perhaps that'll be harder to lose??

From:

tyger

Hopefully! :D

From:

I've been known to lose my mind. Does that count?

From:

That depends on whether you need it to do craft with, I guess!

From:

My mind is crafty and devious, in case that had escaped you. :-)

From:

*rimshot*

From:

*bow*

From:

jenna_thorn

measuring tapes. When the little cheap ones in plastic cases go on sale for a buck a pop, I buy five at a time, I've got one sewn onto a pincushion that pops up when I don't need it, and I have two metal woodshop ones that I've been known to use for costuming in a pinch, usually to the dismay of the person I'm measuring, since they are cold and sharp-edged.

What am I using to check lengths on the sock in progress by the bed? An antique folding one measuring stick from my grandfather's estate.

From:

Welcome!

I have been known to measure dressmaking/craft things with my metal workshop tape too, I must admit, but I can usually locate the fabric tape - it's unusual when I can't, rather than us usual when I can. Antique measuring stick sounds wonderful!!

From:

jenna_thorn

Half my measuring tapes are missing one end or the other, since the hubby loses his, too, and comes into the house looking to see if I've stolen his metal ones (to be fair, I usually have) and uses my fabric ones. And then accidently cuts off the ends or mangles them. There's a reason woodworking tapes are metal, after all.

I found a picture of one like my grandfather's. Actually, a bunch of his stuff comes in handy at odd moments. The kid and I had a field day with oven-bake-clay and the leather embossing tools and dental tools.

From:

Ohhhh my dad had (has?) one of those folding calliper rules too! They are cute and useful. My whole house is filled with my grandparents' old furniture since I am the poor relative and nobody else needed furniture at the time it was available - it's really cozy to be surrounded by stuff with happy memories.

I see your issue with partially mangled tape measures, that's definitely Special! At least my fabric tape measure is safe from errant woodworkers :)

From:

Oh god I cannot keep those big eyed yarn needles on hand for anything. They disappear as soon as I get ready to finish a project! Uuuugh. I've even started keeping them magneted to something and they still disappear.

From:

MEE TOO!

Also pens, but in that case it's my two small kinder who have a tendency to take them apart/play poundy games that destroy them.

From:

OMG pens do this ALL THE TIME.

Actually my favourite special 4-colour pen (thicker barrel = easier to hold) seems to stay with me now I've taken to keeping it in the spiral binding of my notebook, but there's never any other pens around. I did solve this just by cheating though - I bought one of those cheap cheap packs of crappy pens where it's aa few dollars for 20 or something. They're hideous to write with but I can usually find at least one!

From:

*sigh* I hate crappy pens. They make my handwriting hideous.

From:

This is the secret, you see: As long as I can make sure my 4-colour pen doesn't go missing the crappy pens are just for my helpers to use! And I don't much care if their handwriting is crappy. So everybody is happy! \o/

From:

Ah. Hm. I shall have to ponder this.

From:

acelightning

i lose bottles and tubes of glue, which then dry up and become useless, upon which i find them again. i lose packets of jewelry findings or beads. and i've got a huge amount of fabric that just got stuffed willy-nilly into plastic storage containers the last time i moved, and those containers are stacked in the spare room, behind stacks of cardboard boxes full of books and other things, so all that fabric is sort of lost also.

i love the idea of using beautiful quilt bits to widen your trousers! that's an old hippie thing, related to using a triangle of paisley material in each pants leg to turn straight jeans into bell-bottoms. once you've started at the bottom, you might as well continue adding colorful fabric all the way up :-)

From:

Well, I was brought up by hippies :)

How long since you moved? I find it hard to understand people who cart around boxes of stuff that isn't unpacked, being an anti-packrat and all!! I seem to have lost an entire shopping bag full of leather craft stuff though :/ Was looking for it this week and there's no hint of it anywhere ... frustrating!!

From:

acelightning

and i was a hippie :-D

the last move was about six years ago, but there were complications. first, we had to move in a tremendous hurry, so we just stuffed everything into boxes at random. i still haven't found which box contains some of my dishes! furthermore, we had a storage locker. when my father died and we cleaned out the house, i couldn't bear to look at things enough to sort them, so all of the stuff from my parents' house got boxed up and put into the storage locker. about a year after we moved here, we could no longer afford the rental on the storage locker, so all those boxes got brought to the house... and i still don't relish the thought of going through everything. thirdly, until recently, i didn't have the physical stamina to move boxes and stuff around. (i'm mildly amazed at how much more endurance i have now that i'm not anemic from internal bleeding.) i'm still basically lazy, though :-(

From:

I always forget you're an AULD PHART! *worships* :)

I am glad you have some stamina now and yes, I see your moving issues have been epic! I am a big fan of the "one box at a time" technique but I'm known to be a weird mutant (see "anti-packrat" in the dictionary :)).

LOVE YOU!

From:

acelightning

yup, i'm an old hippie. i wonder whether

sheramil still has the "goth tie-dye" t-shirt i made him - brown, black (actually a very dark grey, because pure black is almost impossible to get with home dyes), very dark green, very dark blue, very dark red, very dark purple. that was fun to make!

*GREAT BIG HUGS*

From:

feyandstrange

I broke my ankle a billion years ago back when we had plaster casts still, and mine was so enormous no trousers would fit. And it was winter and very cold! So I took the jeans I'd had to CUT OFF ME (dude, next time tell me to take my pants off before sealing me in plaster! those were new! yes I would rather have gone home in no pants!) and stuck a strip of stretch velvet a couple inches wide into the seam. Kept me warmer than skirts and stretched enough to fit over the plaster monstrosity. If I'd been less lazy I could have done both legs and had a matching pair, but I didn't really care. I've seen some jeans with sari trim and other pretty fabrics at the hems or seams, and it looks lovely.

I lose art pencils insanely easily. I have drawn a comic (in ballpoint pen) about losing my art pencils.

I always used to lose the pincushion, complete with all the pins, when I sewed more. I had two pincushions and two of the sort that had magnets in them AND a random dish of pins and I still couldn't ever find a pin when I needed one.

From:

I definitely share your pin problem but I was hoping my pincushion would solve the problem ... fingers crossed!!

Thanks for the jean notes, they sound great :)

From:

azurelunatic

And not crafty, but I cannot actually hold on to a hairbrush until the entire apartment has reached saturation point with them.

From:

Also unrelatedly, I have this problem with FORKS. I own a full set of cutlery so there's probably 8 or 10 forks in the house. How many do you think I could find yesterday? Not a single one ... I ate dinner with a spoon!

From:

cme

I lose my sewing gauge! Now I own something like four.

From:

I don't even know what a sewing gauge is, but I hope you find one :)

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Ricky Buchanan

Not Done Living!