Talk Back Thursday

Thank you so much to Lois, Katie, Faye, Debbie, Becky, Gwen, Mamafitz, Mary, Alison, Katherine, Claire, Summerset, Patsijean and Lisa Laree for talking back to my confession last week! I asked about straight pins and, in particular, how often people replace them.

For starters, no one is living my pin-dream-life where you buy one packet and they last forever. Most people find that, over time, their pins become dull and bent, lose their heads, form little burrs and sometimes even rust. As for the people who don’t experience this, it’s mostly because they lose their pins before any of that can happen! ;)

And pretty much everyone does something very simple and very logical – whenever they find a “bad” pin (maybe it lost its head and got a tattoo or something…) they dispose of it in a safe way – putting it in an old spice bottle, an old prescription bottle, an old photo film canister, etc.

I really need to do this – I have a bad (i.e., lazy!) habit of putting the bad ones back on my magnetic pin holder, where they can mix with the good ones and stir up trouble… ;)

At this point, there is a split – most people go out and buy a new set when they find that their supply of good pins isn’t enough to complete a project.

But a couple of lucky people are able to rely on the kindness of friends and family and find that packages of straight pins tend to appear in Christmas stockings and next to birthday cakes. How nice is that! :)

If you are trying to get as much life as possible out of your pins, Mary had a tip – she uses emery strawberries to re-fresh pins with small nicks and burrs on them.

Not surprisingly some people talked about the types of pins they use – but I’m going to ask about that in a separate confession, so I’ll hold back a summary of those comments until then.

Thanks again to everyone who commented! I promise to start discarding my bad pins as I come across them - cross my heart! ;)

Photo credit: The Graphics Fairy