The Wheels of Time Go 'Round and 'Round...

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All through the town!   Is it just in MY part of town where they seem to be spinning like a roulette wheel?

At any rate, I was FINALLY able to keep my date with the crochet hook and put an edging on my tatted edging.  At first I was a little edgy MYSELF (apparently I'm NOT a natural with a crochet hook) and kept pulling my stitches so TIGHT on the first row that I couldn't WEDGE the hook between threads to add the second row!  After a few practice runs I decided to forge ahead and while it is BY NO MEANS perfect, I am happy with the result.

This is an edging I found through the Antique Pattern Library.  It is Plate II, Edging #8 of Dillmont DMC Library Tatting.  I looked for its year of publication but was unable to find it.  Many of the patterns in the Antique Pattern Library are from the second or third decade of the twentieth century so I imagine shuttles flying to create this pretty little edging in the teens when the WHEELS OF TIME was published and my grandmother, who raised peonies but did not tat, sat for her portrait, or the twenties when this copy of NEEDLECRAFT was posted to a Miss Cora Boyer, who perhaps is SOMEONE'S grandmother and seems to have taken VERY good care of it.

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Although there were no tatting patterns in this edition of NEEDLECRAFT, I did enjoy looking at some of the crochet projects and a little embroidery.  I was especially drawn to the ads because they made my imagination run amuck  thinking about what life may have been like in THOSE days...  Did Grandma and Cora enjoy the "All-day Energy" they got from quick Quaker Oats even back then?  Would Fels-Naptha and a good scrubbing have gotten my clothes cleaner than my Tide?  Was Cora a girl who pored over "The Letters of a Young Bride" or an older, BUT NOT OLD, woman like myself who may have considered touching up her hair with some sage tea?  Either way I'm sure her life was very different from mine and I couldn't help but be thankful to be living in this day and age with computers and access across the miles to others who enjoy the same hobbies.

I wonder... if I had been a beginning tatter in THOSE days... would the tidbits of advice found in the section entitled "What Other Needleworkers Have Found Out" have helped?  I guess just like how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, "the world will never know."

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