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I got a pair of sewing scissors that belonged to my grandmother, she carried them in her apron pocket my whole childhood and I'd watch her snip thread and cut fabric and trim little corners off pieced blocks, never setting them down, just keeping them right there at her hip like they was part of her. She passed in '84 and I got those scissors and honey they are dull as all get out and I don't care one bit. I could get them sharpened, I know I could. But it feels wrong somehow, like I'd be erasing the wear she put in them. Every little nick and gap in the blade is from her hand. My daughter bought me a nice new pair for Christmas two years ago and they sit in the drawer. I use them when I have to. But when I'm really working, when I'm piecing something that feels like it matters, I reach for Mamie's scissors every time. They pull at the fabric more than they cut it sometimes. And that's alright with me. Anybody else got a tool they keep using past when they should? Or am I just being sentimental?

there's a pair of kitchen scissors i stole from my ex-husband's apartment four years ago that i use for everything, cutting paper, trimming thread, opening packages of charcoal, cutting my own hair in a pinch. they're the worst scissors for art. not sharp, the pivot is loose, they leave a ragged edge on everything. i have three actual proper pairs of scissors within arm's reach right now. i reach for the bad kitchen ones every single time. i think about this more than makes sense. like, am i punishing the material? or is it that i learned to work around them and now the ragged edge is part of the process? or i just like that they're mine in a way nothing else in this room is mine. anyway. the paper i'm cutting right now looks like it's been chewed by something. i'm leaning into it.

I've been using them sixty-two years. She already had them worn smooth when she put them in my hand at eight years old, told me "these yours now, you take care." And I did. I sharpened them myself every year, oiled the screw, never dropped them once. Today I'm cutting a scrap for a border piece and they just, wouldn't. Snagged and pulled, made that awful crunch sound through the fabric. Laid them down real gentle and just looked at them a minute. I got a new pair at the craft store this afternoon. Nice enough scissors. They don't feel like mine. Told my daughter on the phone and she said "Mama, they were scissors." I said they were her great-grandmother's hands reaching through mine, is what they were. She got quiet. Anyway. I'll keep the old pair on the shelf. They earned their rest.

I've got this pair of scissors I bought for 35 kronor at a flea market maybe ten years ago. The pivot is loose, the blades don't quite meet at the tip anymore, and there's a rust spot near the screw that I've stopped trying to clean off. They look like they should be useless. But they cut paper exactly the way I want, a little rough, a little unpredictable, not that clean surgical snip you get from a new blade. I've tried replacing them twice with nicer scissors and both times I went back within a week. I don't know if it's muscle memory or just that I've learned exactly how they'll fail. But they're the only tool I own that I'd actually be unsettled to lose.

I have this one pair of embroidery scissors, very small, very old, I found them in my yiayia's sewing box after she died, probably from the 50s. I don't embroider. I don't sew. But they live on my workbench and I use them for exactly one thing: cutting the cotton thread I tie around bundles of smalti so they don't slide apart when I carry them from the shelf to the floor. Nothing else. If I need to cut string or paper or anything, I use something else. These scissors just do this one job. It's stupid. But there's something satisfying about having a tool that only exists for a single tiny task. Like a little ritual object. Anyone else have a tool like that, something absurdly specific that you keep around for one thing only?

i've had this rubbermaid bin under my work table for like four years. t-shirts he wore that my mom couldn't throw away and neither could i. today i just took the scissors to one of them. a faded green one from a 5k he ran in 2008. felt like i was doing something wrong for the first ten minutes. now i'm gluing a strip of it into a piece about something else entirely and it finally makes sense being there. not as a memorial or whatever. just as a color and a texture that belongs in the thing. anyone else sit on materials forever before you can touch them? or is that just the hoarder gene

I got this old adjustable lamp my son found at a yard sale, must be from the 70s, green enamel shade all chipped up. I keep it aimed just so at my cutting table where the afternoon sun comes through the window and I swear there's this ten minute window around six o'clock where the light hits the fabric just right and I can see every thread and every stitch clear as day. Built the whole corner around that little stretch of time. I know it's silly but I'll sit there with my scissors and my strips and wait on it. That's my favorite time to work. Everything slows down. Y'all got a time of day that just works for what you do?