Ordnung muss sein. Ribbon Love.

Ordnung muss sein. There's got to be order. When I was thinking of the title for this post, I had this German phrase going on and on round my head. Why in German? Perhaps because from a stereotypical point of view, order is a quality attributed to the German nation and I, though not German, subconsciously must have been longing for one. For a while I kind of have felt I need to sort out my ribbons. There was a massive tangled THING in my ribbon box and it was just getting on my nerves whenever I wanted to pull one out to use on a card. So time for ribbon taming! I sat on the floor and for the 2 consecutive hours I was untangling the messy ribbon ball, chucking away remaining cardboard spools and placing my ribbons in a colour-coordinated fashion in the glassy jars. Voila! 

I've had a few empty jam jars put away for upcycling (read: in my case, glass painting) and they just came in handy for this kind of thing. It is my ambition and I've had it in my plans for months to paint and decorate those jars with glassy stones and glass paints so they look funky just like the content inside. However, with autumn and Christmas coming, they may have to wait a little more for their turn :) The two kilner jars at the front had already been done decorating and I've been using them to store some ribbons for a while. I blogged about them HERE - if you're interested. 

I just love ribbons. I could have hundreds of them :) My favourite ones are ginghams, tartans, stripes, dots and chevrons, ric-racs plus of course any ribbons with a Scandi-look :) Both satin and organza. Funnily enough, I'm surprisingly stingy with using them in my crafts - I just want to have them, collect them, keep them stored, look at them, admire them... LOL

Well, these 3 ribbon batches have joined my collection recently. Not at one go of course. It took 3 separate shopping excursions to the same place to collect them. They are American Craft ribbons - beautiful colours and designs. Could I resist? Hell, no! They still remain unpacked, untouched ;) too nice to be used at the moment and they need to "mature" a bit, me thinks ;) I'm particularly happy about the batch in the middle - it's something I haven't had before - natural dyed string. So funky and a nice change from a usual macramé string! 

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Topic change. Guess how I spent last Sunday evening? Chasing an alive mouse around our living room! While I was busy cutting my bf's hair in the kitchen, one of our cats got in through an open window and brought in her prey with her. Not until I had heard something squeaking, did I realize what we had in our house. Was just about to shoo the cat outside hoping she would take the mouse with her when she actually went further in the room and dropped the mouse to play with it. The rest you can guess... the mouse ran away and hid itself somewhere under the old bureau. Great! With all the heavy furniture around it won't be easily found. The cat which brought the mouse (actually to be correct, it wasn't a mouse as such, it was a vole) quickly lost her interest, turned her back and left, probably for some more "lovely prezzies". Our Stinky just kept on sleeping on the sofa, not bothered at all by a running vole! So much for the cats' help. Bf suggested going to town the following day and buying a mouse trap. I spent a long time stressing and wondering what's gonna happen to that vole. Some time later I caught a glimpse of the vole running along the wall under a radiator. Up and running. Healthy and not wounded at all. I started tracking it but it was far too tiny and too fast to be caught. It tried to nibble at a plastic wrapping for the oaty (!!!) biccies it found on the floor. I could hear it rustling every so often. At 1.30 am I was still up trying to catch that vole and it started to move to another parts of the house! Finally I manged to cover it with a plastic blender bit (!!!) when it was running confused to and fro next to my cat's litter tray. I slid the paper underneath and transported the little vole outside. Back to its natural grassy home. Phew! <sighing with relief>

Here's the photo of the little culprit just after catching it. Teeny-tiny cute vole :) I was glad I didn't have to set up a mouse trap for it. Not the best quality photo but there was really no time to play with the camera settings! 

Yay! Happy Ending! :)