I love it when old threads are brought current. Reading that safety article scared me. I share my sewing room with my parrots, so when my puppy comes in with me he sticks his head in the cage bottom to eat their dropped food (I make a granola mix for the parrots) and doesn't bother my sewing. The only thing that he has eaten is sponges, so we no longer use them - we didn't always out them on the back of the sink and if left near the edge of the counter he would take them to his bed and eat the entire thing. Lucky for us the yellow sponges were visable when he went to the bathroom. No ER visits for us. I do miss my sponge for clean-ups though.

We used to have a White Shepard, Wuf, that taught me much about keeping my work put away. When I did counted thread designing, I would have multiple projects out, tucked away in their zip top bags and all in a basket by my work chair. Wuf got upset when I left one day - and chewed my pearl cotton balls! I learned that put up and put away were two very different things :wink:

Now my sewing area is right out in the midst of everything, and my main sewing table sits between 2 lateral file cabinet/bookself combos. It has taken some doing, but the Boyz now know they can come out and lay down in front of the laterals (they each took their turns wanting to be under foot!) I keep thread catchers all around, and usually have a spare bit of batting up by the sewing machine as a backup to catch threads. Magnetic pin catchers are the rule here, and I have a wand I sweep to pick up any I may have missed.