Saturday, August 27, 2011

what lurks in the wool aisle

* Greetings, it is I, here once again to share my thrift store and swap meet treasures!

In honor of upcoming Halloween (what, it's never too soon to start counting down!), may I present Junior Casuals from Mary Maxim, date unknown.

Clowns. Scary, rubber-nosed, kneeling clowns with a suspicious look in their eye. The little girl seems happy enough, like she's about to curtsey. But we'll never see her again ... in this booklet at least.


How can they be smiling and not notice the scarecrow coming to life mere feet from where they stand?!?


They've brought along carrots to appease the appetite of the White Rabbit. Perhaps they will live after all.


I think the little girl is beginning to lose her mind. The pinata speaks to her, commands her to do his bidding.


This fellow isn't too bad, but he's about to win some kind of staring contest.


That has got to be one of the worst cat costumes I've ever seen. The eyes are so blank and soulless ...


We reach the end. The little girl has seen too much today. "Come and play with us, Danny. Forever... and ever... and ever"

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Five towels agree ...

* Let's talk about chores! And embroidered towels! what fun!

Srsly, as I may have mentioned I've been on a real embroidery/cross-stitching kick lately. I'm working on one cross stitch, and planning 3 embroideries, including some kitchen towels. I've been collecting vintage patterns for a year now, so I have quite the selection to choose from.

Especially popular/common are day-of-the-week towels. So I started to wonder, do they all say to do the same chore on the same day? Let's see!

Across the board, Monday is the day for laundry.
The funny thing is, I realized that I do laundry on Mondays. Got it from my mom, who also does laundry on Mondays. So I asked her why - it's because her mom did laundry on Mondays. There ya go, passed down through the generations.


Is there a  GIANT cat looking through the window?!?
Everybody also agrees that Tuesday is for ironing. Guess it makes sense to iron the day after doing laundry.



Wednesday the towels start to disagree (not a sentence you get to type every day). Aunt Martha says Wednesday is the time for a notepad and pencil to dance - I'm gonna assume that means go grocery shopping. But everyone else agrees that Wednesday is for mending.


Thursday is the day for grocery shopping to everyone but the colonial girl and Aunt Martha. Martha says Thurs is for mending, and the colonial girl goes visiting. Hmm, the colonial girl never goes grocery shopping, guess she just eats at other people's houses while she's visiting.
(I love this design because we have a local grocery store called Thrifty. I stitched this onto a reusable tote for my mom-in-law.)


On Friday, Gretchen the Dutch girl leaves the pack and bakes, while all the other towels (and my mom and I) clean.


Saturday Gretchen and the other towels reverse - Gretchen does her cleaning and the kitten, bees and colonial girl bake.


Aww, little baby bee sleeping in the hammock!
Sunday everybody is back to agreement - in a manner of speaking. The bees and kitten relax in hammocks, Gretchen picks flowers, Aunt Martha's newspaper funnies sit around and laugh, and the colonial girl goes to church.

To sum up, the towels agree on Monday, Tuesday and Sunday. Other days you are free to do your own thing.
Hope you enjoyed my Tour of Towels! If you'd like to see more, check out Vintage Embroidery Patterns and New Embroidery with Vintage Patterns on Flickr.


p.s. I am sorely tempted to do something ... horrific with this one ;)