Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 145

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

I don't mind the dark of winter, I never did, but I'm still ready for spring now. That certain scent in the air and not having to wear a jacket outside.
But wait, what is that ...

Are you ready for spring and for the weekend? 

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Becoming HIS Tapestry.

Brenda from Becoming HIS Tapestry says: "Hi, my name is Brenda. I am a Christian first, a wife to a wonderful amazing man. A mom to two beautiful girls who were homeschooled, a daughter, a sister and a friend and a teacher. ... Here are a few of these threads, my love for the Lord, my love for my family, my love for homeschool (I enjoy spending time with my girls), my love for...shhhhhhh...fashion, beauty and shopping."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Ann got new built-in bookcases and is showing us the process.

We all have our favorite kitchen appliances, don't we? Let's look at Amy's!

What do you remember about people? Lisa's cousin surprised her with his answer.

Do you like nuts? Nancy has interesting information on them!

Sometimes Saskia is jealous of those instagrammable morning Mom routines. Hers is a little different.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Oh, Doctor!

"A hy-po-chon-dri-ac is a man who knows he was born to die — and spends all his life making good at it."
Welcome to "Oh, Doctor!" from 1925 with Reginald Denny (who danced so superbly in "Skinner's Dress Suit") and Mary Astor.

Here's the plot (with spoilers again this time).

Little Rufus Billop didn't have an easy arrival in this world and was not expected to live. He did, however, but with a thermometer in his mouth and shielded from everything dangerous.
As a consequence, he became a hypochondriac. A doctor suggests a sanitarium stay, but Rufus doesn't have the money - yet. The doctor suggests borrowing on the $750.000 he will inherit in three years, but Rufus is convinced no one will be crazy enough to take the risk as the money will go to charity if he dies earlier.
The doctor finds three businessmen who propose to give Rufus $100,000 now and they will get the full inheritance in three years. What a bargain!

Of course, they have Rufus checked through by several physicians beforehand, and when they find out that "Death Watch Mary" is the "patient's" first nurse, they take measures right away and hire a lovely nurse - Dolores Hicks - instead to liven him up.

For Rufus, it's love at first sight, and when he asks the maid what women like and she lets him know they like a man who's "not afraid of nothin'", he decides to become one of those.
He participates in a car race and gets out alive but not unscathed, he has a motorcycle accident and has planned much more from flying to deep sea diving.
You can imagine what his stunts do to the three loan sharks!

They are not the only ones worried, though. Miss Hicks is developing more than nursing feelings for Rufus, and not only does she want him to stop his daring ventures, but also to prevent Cinch, McIntosh, and Peck taking all his money.
So when Rufus tells her he doesn't want to be afraid more, she promises to support him, even in his plan to paint a flagpole on top of a building.

Her plan is to shock the three money lenders who see their investment in danger so much that they will sign the document a lawyer has set up for Dolores which will make the inheritance go back to Rufus.

The plan works, but only when Dolores threatens not to marry Rufus if he doesn't come down immediately.

The movie is based on the book "Oh, Doctor!" from 1923 by Harry Leon Wilson.
What makes it such a charming comedy for me is that it's funny, but not too over the top.

Reginald Denny portrays Rufus as bashful and childlike but not annoyingly whiny, and although I'm not into daredevils, it was enjoyable watching him break free from his fears.
Thanks to the glasses and the flagpole stunt, you are getting clear Harold Lloyd vibes, but it never felt like an imitation.

Mary Astor (who was only 18 at the time, would you have thought?) makes Dolores a very relatable character. Dr. Seaver tells her Rufus is a hypochondriac, so she's amused when she first meets him - I could almost hear her go tsk at him - but then finds there's more and finally falls in love with him.
I like to think that she would guide Rufus through life in the same smart and calm way she does set things straight in the film.
I also love the smile on her face when she tells him to come down off the pole. (Also - don't you love her finger waves and that cloche hat? I do and I would have looked so silly with it, sigh.)

Of course we also have the supporting cast. I don't know them (yet), but it seems all of them were known character actors.
Cinch, McIntosh, and Peck were a brilliant trio. They made me think of Ebenezer Scrooge, just funnier, for example with their individual nervous tics.
I liked Aunt Beulah as well, and the scene in which she brings in a masseuse after Rufus asks for a doctor is hilarious.
The dancing maid was a real hoot.
There's just one problem which we can't seem to avoid with films from those days, we have a - luckily short - scene with an Asian servant and embarrassing title cards. I don't know if he's in the book as well, but we wouldn't have needed him in the film.

And still, definitely a recommendation from me!


As many of the other silent movies I have watched so far I found this one on Fritzi Kramer's blog, thank you!
Fritzi Kramer: Oh, Doctor! (1925) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, May 7, 2013

From my children's book cabinet - Die Lockett-Kinder

I have talked about the city library of my childhood, the one that had been into turned into an apartment building when the library moved to the "Adelberger Kornhaus" in 1981. To be fair, the old building had been an apartment building before housing a library, first the American library after the Second World War which was then merged with the city's own library.
I'm sure the librarians appreciated the comfort of the new building (well, actually old as the Kornhaus is one of the few still existing medieval buildings in town which was restored for the library).

I know I would as a librarian, but of course I haven't forgotten the library I grew up with and was the foundation for my reading habit, you could say (as was my family).
The feeling of going in there and not only looking for new books, but also returning over and over again to the comfort reads of my childhood, drawn to certain shelves like a magnet still lingers in my memory.
Which brings us to the book I picked from my cabinet today - "Die Lockett-Kinder" by M. E. Atkinson (only the German translations say "Mary E.") which was first published in 1954 and whose original title is "August Adventure", published in 1936.
It's the first one of a fourteen book series about the three Lockett children and their friends. I think my library had all six that I know were translated into German. They are collectibles now, so I'm glad I already own five of them and also a few English ones! Instead of getting the last German one, though, I ordered the five books I'm still missing in English which only cost me about twice as much as the one book.

The Lockett children are Oliver (12), Jane (13), and Bill (10). Their parents live in India. Jane lives with an aunt and uncle while her brothers are in a boarding school and only come home in the holidays. Luckily, there are several aunts who take turns in taking the three during the holidays.

In this book, however, all of the aunts go travelling at the same time, so they are invited for the summer holidays by their Aunt Lavinia whom they don't even know yet. She's a painter and a free spirit who sometimes just takes off in her brightly painted horse wagon roaming the lands.

When the children get to her house, though, Lavinia isn't there. Instead they find a strange man who tells them Lavinia has taken a trip and won't be back home soon. A tag left on the table mentions a town.
We all know what the children have to do now, right? Of course they have to take the horse wagon and get to that town. They do send Lavinia a telegram hoping it will get forwarded to the current address which they don't have and which the guy at the post office won't give them, but they can't wait around at the house with a strange man in it who tells them - not very convincingly - that he has rented that house for those ten days or so.

To make matters slightly more difficult - really better, though, how they find out soon - there's a girl standing at the door saying that she was sent to stay with Lavinia because her grandmother is sick and that her five year old brother Robin will join them as well.
Luckily, Anna is experienced with horses and knows how to deal with Pegasus and Robin is much more mature than the Locketts have anticipated.
On they go and the adventure can begin, and an adventure it truly is. They literally go through fire and water, save a dog, spend a night in a haunted house, play cricket, some of their money gets stolen, and much more. More importantly, they make new friends and some enemies as well, but of course we get a happy ending.

Ah, those times when children could still travel hundreds of miles by themselves!
Granted, one village butcher questions this to be a good idea, but after leaving that village they get around hearing more unsolicited opinions by grown-ups - honestly, how dare they? - by putting Anna's long braids up to make her look older as she's the tallest of them. Amazing how easy it is to deceive adults, especially if you take into account that Anna is actually a few months younger than Jane.

I loved the books so much and I so envied these kids being allowed to live the life of the free when I really knew I would have missed my bed very much on the first night. That's the nice thing about books, you can pretend and dream.
Maybe I was also jealous that they were so practical and skilled. They cooked, they knew how to send a telegram and drive a horse wagon, and they never seemed to be very afraid ... a little, but not enough to keep them from going and always finding a way to deal with the circumstances.
I would probably have had a hard time making it to the next village.

By the way, if you have read my post about Enid Blyton and domestication, foreignization, and continuation books last year, you may wonder about the German translations.
Obviously, I can't compare directly as I only have the books either in German or in English, but from what I've read my guess is nothing much has been changed except for translating "Manor" in a house's name to the German "Herrenhaus".
Also there are footnotes, one explaining English boarding schools, the others, quite lengthy, explaining cricket. It would have been easy to change the German text, turning cricket into another sport, for example. That suggests foreignization rather than domestication.

It's really a pity that there are almost no illustrations. The English originals were beautifully illustrated by Harold Jones.
The cover of the German book is not a Jones illustration, but I can't tell you who did it because they didn't get any credit in the book.
There you can only find a map showing the Locketts' trip. The original was also by Jones, but this one isn't. You can tell it's inspired by the original, but it isn't as elegant, and again there's no name.
I found a copy of the book listed in an online store for old books with the names Mary E. Atkinson and Susanne Ehmcke. Ehmcke was a German children's book author and illustrator, but that listing is the only one where I found the name in connection with "August Adventure" at all, so I have my doubts if it was really her.

When I think of the old library today, like when I pass the building, the first image coming to mind is always me heading to the A shelf and looking for the Locketts and often getting disappointed. The books were popular at that time and often checked out, well, and then I guess they were culled eventually when interest waned or the books were too damaged.

I'm looking forward to the ones that are heading my way to 
complete my little collection.
Don't say goodbye to the Locketts just yet, they have a good chance of returning to this blog (especially with my favorite book!).


Further reading (including pictures of Harold Jones's illustrations):

1. **: August Adventure. On: The Silver Locket, August 29, 2021
2. **: August Adventure. On: The Silver Locket, August 18, 2024
3. Todd Klein: Rereading: AUGUST ADVENTURE by M. E. Atkinson. On: Todd's Blog, March 28, 2024

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 144

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

I don't know if you have ever heard of Wilhelm Busch. Busch was a influential German humorist, painter, poet, and illustrator. You might have heard of "Max and Moritz" for example who inspired "The Katzenjammer Kids".
One of my favorite quotes by Busch is this one.

I found this rhymed translation for it
somewhere years ago, but the source is gone.
"One-two-three, in hasty race,
time is running, we keep pace."

It's certainly true, don't you think? Can you believe February is almost over as well?

Ready for the weekend now everyone? 

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Reviews From the Stacks.

Jana from Reviews From the Stacks says: "Hello there! I'm Jana, and Reviews From the Stacks is my blog. I started Reviews From the Stacks in 2018 as a place to share reviews of high quality books, especially lesser-known and potentially indie published ones, and to be a place for discussing all kinds of bookishness. I work in a library and have a BA and MLIS, so bookishness seems to follow me everywhere I go!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Do you need a quick medal? Laura and Laurie have got you covered, not just for the Olympics!

Do you have a book journal? Erin is giving us a glimpse at hers.

Read "The Blue Castle" along with Lisa. Here's the introduction.

Lydia is talking about mirrors.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - The Bat

Today's film is 100 years old! It will never cease to amaze me not only that these films exist at all, but that some of them were regarded as lost - as was this one - and then suddenly a print turns up somewhere. Check your attics, people! 😉
I offer to you "The Bat" from 1926.

I'll give you the plot first, but it'll be different from how I usually do it.
For one, there will be spoilers, but not the major spoiler for the ending because "Can you keep a secret? Don't reveal the identity of "The Bat". Future audiences will fully enjoy this mystery play if left to find out for themselves." This is the first title card for the movie. The play it is based on also advised the audiences not to give the secret away. Okay then, if they insist.
Secondly, the plot is a little confusing. There are several floors in the house, long staircases, and a lot of doors, visible and secret ones. So I'm going to start by listing some characters.

We have:

Courtleigh Fleming - (late) bank president and former owner of the Fleming Mansion
Richard Fleming - Courtleigh's nephew and heir
Dr. Wells - Courtleigh's doctor
Cornelia Van Gorder - current tenant of the Fleming Mansion
Lizzie Allen - Cornelia's maid (for 20 years)
Dale Ogden - Cornelia's niece
Brooks Bailey - bank cashier, suspected of robbing the bank
Detective Moletti - detective sergeant
Detective Anderson - private detective called in by Cornelia
Billy - the (Japanese, and yes, they manage to make it awkward at times) butler
*** - an unknown injured man
*** - a man hiding his face
*** - a miller moth
*** - THE BAT

The Bat is a criminal dressed as, you've guessed it, a bat. He's terrorizing the town and not shying away even from murder. He has already stolen the Favre Emeralds and killed their owner Gideon Bell. Now he wants to rob the Oakland Bank, but a man hiding his face behind a scarf has beaten him to it. As Brooks, the cashier, has disappeared, he's the prime suspect.

Now we come to the lonely Fleming Mansion leased by Cornelia Van Gorder in search of some peace and quiet. What could offer more comfort than a house with walls, doors, and windows at least 15 feet high?
She lives there with her maid Lizzie who's very nervous about The Bat and her niece Dale who introduces a new gardener who's actually Brooks hiding from the police. Brooks also happens to be Dale's (still secret) fiancé.
You also need to know Dr. Wells and Richard Fleming want to scare them all away for yet unknow reasons.

A lot of people call on Cornelia now, Dr. Wells, Richard Fleming, Detective Moletti ... so much for peace and quiet.
Richard is snooping around for a blueprint, but then gets himself shot on the stairs. Dr. Wells tries to get the blueprint, Moletti suspects Dale to have shot Richard (whom they leave lying on the stairs throughout the whole movie if I saw that right). Detective Anderson joins them. Brooks is searching. Lights go out. Windows are fastened and unfastened.
Everyone is running after everyone, there are hidden rooms, hidden doors, hidden money ... ah, now we know. The money is hidden somewhere in the mansion and everyone is searching for it.

And they ran happily ever after?

There are a lot of pistols around, too, so everyone can threaten the others with one. They get dropped on the floor, left unguarded on tables, and to be honest, it's a miracle that not more people get killed - don't forget this is a "horror comedy" (not much horror, I would think, even for an audience of 1926, so "comedy mystery" may be a better description).
And who the heck is the injured man who crept in and out and called for help from the garage (which gets burned down later to add an extra kick) and pretends to be unconscious, but isn't? Aren't we confused enough?

Are we confused? We are confused.
I am. So very confused.

Let's stop it here as I took the vow of silence this time. It wasn't that difficult to guess after a while, but I won't be the one to tell you who The Bat is (and what a shame that Wikipedia gives it away).

What can I say?
There are not just a lot of pistols, but also a lot of people, too many people for my taste. Brooks and Dale didn't do anything for me or the film, neither did Detective Anderson.
I think cutting out some of the characters and some of the running scenes would really have helped.
And still, I found the movie strangely entertaining for which credit definitely goes to Cornelia and Lizzie.

Cornelia is a rock in all of this madness.
She never loses her cool until the end, she's smart and witty and she's the perfect counterpart for ...

A real knitter doesn't let a little bat disturb her.

... her maid Lizzie who keeps panicking in the most hilarious way, but also saves the day in the end together with her mistress.

It was worth watching the movie for those two. It looks as if they had a wonderful relationship, after all Lizzie stood by Cornelia "through Socialism, Theosophism, and Rheumatism" even if she draws the line at "Spookism". They should have got their own mystery series - how does "Van Gorder & Allen" sound? I mean, just look at them up on the roof!

Now let's get to The Bat.
Have you been wondering? Yes, it's true. Not this movie, but one of its talkie successors, "The Bat Whispers" from 1930 (also directed by Roland West), was one of the inspirations for Bob Kane in creating Batman. Maybe you can use that information at the next table quiz.

That mask is horror - to wear?

This, however, is not an early Bat-Signal, but turns out to a "moth-miller on a headlight". Could have fooled me.

There were some great shots which reminded of German expressionism, but it's a pity that they couldn't carry the whole movie.
Like I said, I found it strangely entertaining, but think it could have been more - or actually less. You know what I mean.

A very cool robe. Too bad Gideon won't
live much longer to wear it.

Further reading:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Bat (1926) - A Silent Movie Review. On: Movies Silently, March 18, 2015
2. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "The Bat" (1926). On Silent-ology, October 7, 2021

The personal reading experience

First of all, let me say this post is just my personal opinion. I don't judge anyone for thinking differently or doing something differently, and while you are of course most welcome to share your own experience - in fact I'd love to hear it -, I ask you to return the courtesy.
Second, I'm obviously not a book blogger, just a reader and someone blogging without being very organized.

This post was inspired by a video YouTube recommended to me called "why i left goodreads for book journals".
I can't even say why I clicked on it as I'm neither on Goodreads nor keep a detailed book journal, but I got hooked because it made me think.

Picture via pxhere

Short recap - I had always been an avid reader since my childhood, but when crafting came along, books went on the backburner because reading and crafting don't work at the same time (for those who are new, I can't do audiobooks). When crafting had to go on the backburner for several reasons, the books rushed back into my life like a big wave which I was very grateful for because the gap left had been big, too. In July 2025, I started posting lists of the books I had read each month (no reviews).

In November, I wrote "Again, this is not about numbers. Where do we stop if we rate reading by the number of books? Count pages? And next work out a formula which pages are "worth more" than others because some books are "only" children's books or light reading or scientific or profound ... I could keep going. Just enjoy!"

That's where the video comes in.
Vic explains how setting herself a goal for the year and checking reviews and ratings before but also after reading a book eventually made her feel like she was "losing a sense of identity and individuality with reading".

Have you ever felt doubts about your personal
reading experience when seeing ratings and
reviews after you read a book? That goes both
ways. "Why does everyone love it?" or "Why
doesn't everyone love it?" Then wondering what
I missed. And no, of course it's never everyone.

When she talked about reading goals, it made me wonder why I even numbered my list after saying it wasn't about numbers.
I know I didn't want to brag, but was I trying to prove something to myself? Did I feel I had to convince myself how well I had replaced crafting with reading? Did I need a number to show myself I filled the gap sufficiently and "productively"?
Or did I simply overthink this like usual and I numbered the list because that's what I do with lists?
Something else I hadn't consciously noticed before was that sometimes I felt a pang of guilt on a day without reading which is just ridiculous. Talk about self-inflicted pressure.
When I realized that, I happily binged a season of "The Great Pottery Throw Down" which always relaxes me (and my favorite potter won, too).

Recently, I have heard others say similar things - that they don't want to worry about reading what's popular or that they don't want to set themselves a number for the books they read. They want to enjoy what they read without pressure, pick what they feel like and when they feel like it.
That doesn't mean you can't read reviews anymore or have to dismiss all suggestions, but I think many people just don't want to get sucked in by the Internet and everyone's opinion as much anymore these days. Not just in regards to reading, but in general.

Vic's way to make her reading her own more again was to start a book journal.
That totally makes sense for people who enjoy that experience which can of course be so much more than just writing down titles. I'm just not the journaling type myself (and my handwriting has become so terrible) and know from experience I wouldn't keep it up for long. Who knows, though? Maybe the people I know who keep journals will inspire me eventually?

Picture via pxhere
I chose one with old books
because I love reading old books!

So what did I take away for myself from this for now?
I'm not numbering my book lists anymore because it really isn't important.
I'll keep looking at suggestions and reviews on blogs of course and I'll happily discuss books with people I know, but I don't need to know what the whole world is thinking. I was fine without that before the Internet, I'll be fine now.
What I'm already doing is read what I want and not what I feel I should (although I sometimes feel guilty for not having read more German classics and I might try to catch up on that from time to time).
And believe it or not, I had a really hard time not numbering this last list! 😂

Random Saturday - Purple and green

If you expect something about color coordination in art or fashion, you're wrong, sorry. This is just another post about memories which is inspired by a post written by Nicole from Huisvlijt, "Kringloop Tristesse".
I don't speak Dutch, but from the Firefox translation I get it's about a water can that a school class gave to a teacher and it ended up in a thrift shop still with that tag on.
No idea how it is in other countries, but in my time gifts for teachers were not a big thing, at least not in my school. So I asked a teacher I know how it is today, and he too said that it happens, but not often.

We had one teacher, however, who got several gifts from part of the class, and that was a running joke.
One of my classmates loved the color purple and wore it a lot and said teacher didn't like purple. I don't know what the exact reason was, but he once told my classmate jokingly that purple wasn't a color, but a punishment.
So of course our whole row decided to give him something purple. My friend was a former baker's daughter and good at baking herself - how I loved her Christmas cookies! - and suggested a marble cake, but with purple and pink food dye. It was a big hit (I have no idea if our teacher ate any of it, though).
Anyhow, from then on, he always got something purple at the end of the school year. Nothing big of course, just to keep the joke alive, and we always tried to make it something useful or consumable, so it wouldn't take up unnecessary space.

One year, another teacher said jokingly how much we "spoiled" him (they had become a couple although we didn't know it yet at the time) and another friend of mine told her to pick a color. She said green. That friend did macrame and knitted socks like crazy - it was the 80s and a lot of pupils knitted in class - so she made a beautiful pair of green socks as a Christmas gift, much to our teacher's surprise but also delight.
So from then on we had to get something purple and something green.

Picture by Konevi via pxhere

I even kept the tradition running for several years after leaving school. A lot of my school friends left town to work elsewhere or study, but I lived at home during training as a librarian and my teachers didn't live far from me.
One time, my teacher handed me a little parcel saying "ok, so sometimes purple can be beautiful if it's on the right thing".
It was a framed picture of a purple Porsche (he had a vintage one himself, not purple but red). I don't know if I still have that picture somewhere, but I remember it really made me laugh back then.

Picture by Alex Ifti via Unsplash

So yeah, that's my little story of an "apple for the teacher".
Is it common for children to give their teachers a gift where you are?