And so, got a nice haul of vintage mother-of-pearl—
I took a few other sewing notions of use; otherwise, just brought away pictures of the more notable stuff.
Unfortunately damaged beyond taking: a German-made needle packet from the era of this kind of travel—
Have never heard of these, and I would guess this pack was kept for sewing—
Product was US-made, too. The packaging might be as recent as the 1980s—
Surely a useful item for the lady voter—
That's William Hanes Ayres, who held office 1951-71.
Ayres was elected as a Republican to the Eighty-second and to the nine succeeding Congresses. Ayres was well regarded by House members of both parties. He usually did not list his party affiliation on his campaign literature instead listing himself as "Your Congressman."
Did he simply choose to be a non-partisan public servant? If so, it's startling to realize that option once would have been possible.
"14 years" makes this 1965, and these matchbook kits still were made as advertising giveaways. (A post about kits and their history here.)
Other giveaways included quite a few mystery gadgets. Kind of a sad display representing an unknown number of years' worth of projects abandoned (or never quite started).
This was the most noteworthy of numerous odd gadgets—
Styles reflecting the 1938 origin, to be sure—
This is only half of the directions—
"READ... CAREFULLY!" indeed, when what's required involves so much getting thread through holes and woven around other thread.
Understandably, the would-be lacemaker didn't get far. But this is enough to give an idea of the pattern that was intended—
The set is for what I've learned is Tenerife lace, made by creating and joining wheel motifs. I'm not completely anti-lace, though I'd never be ambitious enough to try making it. But there's something about these particular designs that's oddly unsettling. Perhaps it's due to childhood memories of cartoons where this often was about to happen—
Though it seems like what's in my subconscious is some older, scarier (Max Fleischeresque?) version.
Depth psychology aside, here's a link to a better scan of Polka Spider instructions.
