Knitting Iris

Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living

Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living, the long promised predecessor to Station Wagon Living, Volume 2, blogged almost 2 years ago.

As always, click on the pictures for a closer look.

Really just advertisements for products, these two volumes disguised as books.

A little sock knitting in the woods, of course.

Tailgating, 1950's style.

I'm liking the idea of the 12 volt coffee maker.  Can't you just smell the coffee brewing, at 55, 65,or even 70 mph while driving down the interstate?

As for the picnic table with four attached seats that folds down into a suitcase sized version of itself, several years ago a friend picked one up at the local dump and gave it to us but we passed it on.  So regretting that now.

Apparently this is a good shade tent design as it's still available today here, here and here, but certainly not at 1957 prices.

Regrettably, long gone are the days when you could drop on into Abercrombie and Fitch  for a folding canvas wash basin or a camp torch.  As are the days when plug-in electric razors were "available at any Ford dealership".

"With the middle seat down, the rear of a wagon becomes a play room approximately 7 feet long by 4-plus wide.  Pad the floor with a mattress, put the luggage at the rear and strap it down..., toss a cushion or two on the mattress, strew some toys and books about and turn the kids loose."

"Devise your own means--either mandate or closed windows--to keep the kids from broadcasting books and toys over the passing landscape....Keep rear doors locked to keep the small fry from falling out....If you stack luggage in the rear of a station wagon, lash it down.  In case of sudden stops, free luggage can wreak serious injury."

Surely  you wouldn't want that precious luggage being injured in case of an accident, would you?  Let your children roam freely in the back of the car, but...

"In camp there's always the problem of what to do with toddlers when parents want to visit the neighbors....wise parents take measures to limit the range of travel."   

I'm pretty sure that, as a baby and toddler, my parents brought along a small play pen for me to sleep in inside the tent.

"Novel ideas for containing youngsters on automobile trips have come along in recent years....Wood lugs, wedged betweeen seat and back cushion, hold the seat securely in place." 

Different times, different times.

But not really so different.

Transparent bottom canoe/kayak available today, if you have the $$$$.

Inflatable boat that packs down into a suitcase.  Just be sure to bring along a patch kit.

Skin diving and aqualungers.  Remember?  How can you not love that kind of terminology?

About the last third of this volume is a guide to campgrounds at the time, state by state.

Well, tomorrow we're headed off on the road to Seattle, in the minivan (station wagon of the nineties and beyond) children and adults securely strapped in with the lastest of technologies.

I'm thinking of having some posts ready to auto-post while we're gone but may or may not pull that off before we go.  If not, I'll be back here in a week or so.

Off to finish packing the mini.

 

Living Stones

OK, so these scans aren't vintage.  They're from Maisons Coté Sud, the November 2005 and March 2006 issues and they're for Stephanie because of her fabric covered stones here, here and here.

A French friend here had a subscription to the magazine for a few years and he would pass the issues onto us after browsing through them himself.  So much color and texture in every issue.  A subscription isn't cheap so it's worth a peek through at the magazine stand.  I'm sure the other ones are lovely, too.  Jane talked up the Coté Ouest version here.

When these issues came out I couldn't find much of anything online about the designer of these "Living Stones", another Stephanie, Stéphanie Marin.  Now there is more out there and at her website.

More felted stones on a smaller scale here and here.

And Barb and Stephanie's real ones here and here.

Years ago, my big brother took me to a beach that he calls "Cool Rock Beach".  It's littered with white striped stones but it requires quite an effort to haul them up the cliffside from the beach.  Fortunately people have constucted a hodge podge system of ropes to hold onto as you ascend and descend.

One of the last times he was out on the west coast from NYC my brother filled his luggage to the maximum weight allowed with some of those big striped beach stones.  Apparently, back at the airport in New York, when his backpack came through the baggage carousel the zipper had undone and it came out onto the belt with the stones stacked on top of it.  He said he just slipped those 40 pounds of stones back into his backpack and walked away to catch the Metro, ignoring any funny looks he may have been getting.

We'll be walking the beach (not Cool Rock Beach) ourselves within days and my brother will be there with us to share and celebrate each and every beach treasure found.  I can't wait!

Nomadic Furniture 1

Another favorite, Nomadic Furniture 1, by James Hennessey and Victor Papanek, published 1973, Pantheon Books.  At once retro and current in a

Readymade/Make/Ikea-hacker sort of way.  Although I've never made anything from this book, it's the second copy I've owned, the first having been given away at some point during a move, I'm sure.

As always, click to enlarge picture.

Cardboard seating, both for sale, and to make at home. 

The relaxing chair, of plywood, masonite, and optional egg carton foam, because "in our society (we) need to get the equivalent of 3-4 hourse of relaxing time in one hour..."

The ubiquitous bean bag, then still in its infancy.

The best and worst of the book, in my opinion: the please-don't-try-this-at-home disposable cardboard car seat.  Sure, it makes sense, environmentally, but do you think that it would meet the NHTSA safety standards?

You've just gotta love those single-sheet-of-plywood projects plans.  I really should think about aquainting myself with the table saw.  Or not.

Four collapsible, hardware-free stools from one sheet of plywood.  Cool.

Doll-sized version of above left seat here!

These, I think, are some of the funnier ones, with several takes on "the cube" including the entertaining and relaxation cubes here and also a work cube, and the children's cube on the book's cover.  Why, exactly, would you create a false, wall-free room within a room?  Foreshadowing of office cubicles?

Lighting from styrofoam cups, paper lanterns (Ikea?), and milk jugs.

The original rope lighting and adjustable swing arm lamp?

Storage, both homemade and high end, even more so now: Uten.Silo storage system was $90 then and is available again today starting at $295 here on up to $865 (!) in chrome here.

 

 

I sewed some bean bags for the boys last summer using this pattern instead as it seems preferable because the top and bottom pieces are round and the side pieces curved to fit them, rather than the straight edged pattern pieces here.  Still trying to figure out what to stuff them with, trying to avoid buying polystyrene pellets.  Even after saving all the packing peanuts from presents sent at Christmas they still weren't even a quarter of what one bean bag requires.  We've been bringing extra packing peanuts to the local shipping store for them to reuse for years now so they always tell me that if I ever need any I can just come and ask.  Might be time to call in my chips?  They are rather squeaky and lumpy compared to the tiny styrofoam pellets typically put into bean bags.  Hmmm.  I know Blair has been there before with the bean bag stuffing dilemma..  I'm going to have to go poke around over there for her post about this and see what others had to say in the comments there.

As for cardboard furniture, I've been thinking about purchasing the plans for this play kitchen.  E still asks for a wooden play kitchen for each birthdays and Christmas (Yeah, yeah. I know.  The cabinet maker's son....) but frankly, with the boys at age 5 and 8 now, I can't see spending a whole lot of time or money on either a homemade one or a purchased one.  Of course, I still want the real thing but that isn't really reasonable.  I'm thinking that he also might enjoy helping with the assembly of a cardboard one.  Then, when he tires of it, it can be taken apart and stored flat and eventually recycled or used as mulch in the garden or fire starter in the woodstove rather than taking up precious space, and money.

Oh, and look, there's a Nomadic Furniture 2.  I never knew.

Native Funk And Flash

Native Funk and Flas, An Emerging Folk Art, by Alexandra Jacopetti, photographs by Jerry Wainwright, Scrimshaw Press 1974, probably my most treasured book.  Need I say more?  Apparently I'm not alone.  Just read the reviews.  See what others have said and others have scanned, knitters, even.  Not sure when or where I ever came across this book, 18-20 years ago in a used bookstore Seattle, I'd guess. 

It tickled me to no end, one day at the Boulder Public Library in Colorado when we were living there, to come across not one, but TWO copies side by side on the shelf.  Check your local used book store or library catalog, or check WorldCat.org (what an amazing resource that is!).  Oh, and see here: the Missoula Art Museum, housed in the former Missoula Free Public Library building, opened it's doors in 1975 with the exhibit associated with this book.  You gotta love the internet for some things.

As always, click for a closer look:

Hmmmm,  haven't I seen french knots again somewhere lately?

That's not the Laurel Burch, the one who's dangly enameled cat earrings I wore in high school in the 80's, is it?  Why, yes, apparently it is.  Read more about her.

So much eye candy

and inspiration, it's difficult to decide what not to share.

This a good part of what's in there, at least my favorite parts.

"sunflower-patch-ecology", it doesn't really explain quite what they meant by that, but it sure sounds like something I'd like to subscribe to.  There was a time long ago when I hoped to someday have girls so I could one day make a shirt like this out of scraps from their old dresses.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, it must have been images and stories like these, burned in my mind's eye, that inspired this tank, sewed, embroidered, and never blogged, last summer:

Ultimately, though, it was Amber's sleeved linen version here, and all her sweet and creative embroidery, that is directly responsible for my copy-cat version of the same Simplicity 4589 pattern.  I like it best worn over a t-shirt. 

The linen for this tank was some I bought at the Seattle IKEA for $6.00 a yard way back when they carried fabric. (Is it true they have fabric there again now?)  I hoarded it for quite some time as it wasn't easy to find 100% natural linen back then, especially not at a price that low.  Some of it was made into a jumper dress in the mid-to-late 1990's.  Later, I cut the bodice off when it no longer fit and could no longer wear it while nursing, putting elastic into the lower part making it into a skirt.   Even later, the skirt was turned into a pillow case, which is now nearly worn out.

 

Time and Circumstance

Deep cleaning the house recently (as in, cleaning off the thickly dust laden high up shelves that have been ignored for....too long) in the middle of the night when sleep was elusive led to the coming across of this old cigar box I'd found a few years ago at a garage sale:

which, upon opening, revealed this:

!!!! Tucked away and forgotten about since last fall, or possibly the year before: pressed leaves, maple helicopters, lichens, flicker feathers (Oops. not "flickr" which at first I typed), dried rowan berries, and plain leaf-shaped wooden pieces.  Leafy treasure!

Which led to the making of these:

E's ghost, my fairies, R's lion and fairy.  I like the boys' ones best, and my cowgirl fairy.  They almost created themselves, the pile of leaves dictating what they'd like to be.  Crazy fall shadows across some of these pictures.  Inspired from various sources.  It wasn't until after we made these and hung them up that it suddenly hit me where the true inspiration for these came from, a book that, based on a brief review in an old issue of the now defunct Victoria magazine, I bought second hand and sight unseen on the internet a few years ago.  I hadn't even taken a peek at in a least a couple of years:

It's a beautifully detailed, tongue-in-cheek, farce of a book that leaves you wanting to truly believe.  More pictures from Fairie-ality here, here and here.

Sometimes it just takes the perfect amount of time and circumstance stewed together to make things happen.

"The Gathering In"

Updated thoughts at end of post, several days later.

" You just said suddenly, 'We'll probably leave for home tomorrow.'  You started off ... and you arrived....

...Four months of each summer were spent in our small boat up the long and indented coast of British Columbia, but the focal point of our lives was Little House in the middle of the forest.  The central point or focus of Little House was the big stone fireplace in the corner of the living room -- and the word hearth and focus both have the same meaning -- the place of the fire.

Each fall when the days got shorter and the nights got colder and the maple lit their warning signals, Little House reached out, gathering us in.  We could feel her gently tugging at us across the gulf and up the far coast."

Excerpt is from the book, The Curve of Time, by M. Wylie Blanchet, one that I reread again this fall.

The back cover reads:  "A sensitive, adventurous woman and her crew of five children share the excitement of a small boat in large waters.  Muriel Wylie Blanchet, 1891-1961, was born and educated near Montreal, and settled, with her husband on Curteis Point, near Sidney, on Vancouver Island.  Left a widow with five small children in 1927, she gave them school lessons in winter and coastal cruises in summer."

I'm sure at least a couple people out there are familiar with this book, particularly those in Canada.  I grew up seeing this book on my parents' bookshelf.  My mom has read it several times, even suggesting it and leading her bookgroup's discussion about it.  It not only takes me back to our days sailing along the coast when we were kids, it makes me nostalgic for an earlier time, 40-50 years prior when Ms. Blanchet travelled with her own children, and even the times before that which she writes and speculates about, what it would have been like when Vancouver explored those seas, and even before that, before any europeans had been there.

I like Ms. Blanchet's honest way of writing.  She was curious and knowledgeable and confident and imaginative and yet wrote about her fears and concerns as a mother in a humorous and quite contemporary way.  She learned with her children.  She came home from a summer of adventures  and explorations with her children and spent the winters teaching them at home.  The fact that she was using a a 1885 Encyclopaedia Brittanica in the 1930's makes me feel better about the 1989 World Book Encycopedia set we recently received from a friend who's four children were homeschooled and now are all grown.  What I would give to meet the children of M. Wylie Blanchet and hear their versions of their adventures with their mother!  According to this, they have all passed away.  Homeschooling parents, you might enjoy this book as long as you can tolerate the descriptions of all the places that they travelled, something I personally liked because I'm familiar with the area and many of the places.  This book inspires me to get out there, go places, and take risks I might not have. 

So,  I guess where I was going with this is that our own version of "the gathering in" is "the closing of the door."  The day inevitably comes that we can't leave the door open at all, that it remains shut not only in the chilly mornings and evenings, and that we light a fire in the woodstove not only in the morning but have to keep it going all day.  We've been lucky this year that it didn't come until the middle of October, and we've had several reprieves where we've been able to open the door for the day again.   "The closing of the door" is usually difficult for me, especially since having children.  This year, it's been more of a relief.  I'm enjoying the idea of settling in, having more scheduled, less scattered days, more time spent together at a slower pace, not always on the run.  Despite last week's illnesses which deprived us of some beautiful days, we've enjoyed the incredible fall we've had to the fullest, spending as much time outdoors as possible.  Besides, it's not over yet.  The sky is blue and clear today.

We're on the mend still, sleeping 10 hour nights, eating well.  There's plenty of knitting and crafting to share soon.  And in case you're wondering, those are habañeros drying by the woodstove.  We dry them and grind them into a powdery "shake" for C and I to sprinkle on food to spice things up since the boys don't tolerate spicy foods very well.  It helps to ward off the germs, as well.

Some of the things we saw, learned about, and discussed this summer while sailing in the San Juan Islands with my parents.

Charts (not maps), lines (not ropes), starboard, port, fore, aft, bow, stern, dock, buoy, anchor, anchor light, jib, mainsail, spinnaker, mast, boom, winch, cleat, red on right returning, right of way, wake, fathoms, knots, hull, keel, rudder, tiller, compass, under sail, under motor, with the wind, against the wind, tack, captain, crew, skipper, life jacket, life ring, galley, head, bunk, bilge, sand bar, spit, beach glass, agates, driftwood, seaweed, kelp bed, phosphorus, starfish, agates, starfish, anemone, dinghy, crab grass, crabs, crab pot, bait, oysters, mussels, clams, starfish, barnacles, limpets, hermit crabs, bull heads, flounder, minnows, rock cod, sunfish, orca, sea otter, sea lion, harbor seal, porpoise, tanker, tug boat, barge, container ship, high tide, low tide, slack tide, tide rip, tide pool, whirl pool, rapids....

One of the more perfect hands-on homeschooling environments, then and now.      

Station Wagon Living, Volume 2

This book was a thrift store score from last spring and I think, quite possibly, my new all-time favorite find, and at only 75 cents.  There's something so very right and wrong all at the same time about this book.  It makes me deliriously happy on the one hand and on the other, it's appalling.  So many people don't live or camp in such splendor every single day of their lives. 

Since the boys were born, we've become car campers, bringing practically one of everything in the house along with us.  Well, not a circus-style changing tent, but almost.  We don't bring craft kits, like the ones above, but goodness knows, I'd like to.  I usually do pack along some paper and markers or watercolors, maybe a flower press, and knitting, of course.   Someday, I know I'll be packing along the makings for lanyard zipper pulls and sand candles, just like summer camp.

Just 4 observations/thoughts:

1.  Since when are spinning milk cartons "the universal symbol of camping"?  I'm thinking this tradition needs to be reinstated.

2. Does anybody call S'mores "Princess Pats"?  If not, this might be another candidate for reinstatement.

3.  No one would ever use this phrase in the same way as above today:  "Explosion in our campgrounds"

4.  Our family pictures from when we were little don't look all that different from the ones above, only a good bit more rustic and with cloth diapers strung from tree to tree.  There always was a Norwegian and an American flag hanging off the front of the blue canvas tent's awning.  That tent was the very first thing that my parents ever bought on credit because they couldn't wait another summer to go camping.)  My childhood camping memories are sweet, sweet, sweet!

5.  I can't tell you how badly I'd like to make a bunting for stringing from tree to tree when we're camping.  Shouldn't every campsite look like a carnival?  I'm going to have to try making some of those milk carton spinners, too, only out of Silk soy milk cartons. 

Oops.  That's 5.

6.  I wish there was room to share more of this book here.  I found a copy online of the predecessor to this book, the first volume of Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living, and couldn't help but order it.  It just arrived the other day.  I'll scans some of it soon.

7. Here is the other thing I picked up at the thrift store that same day.  I didn't even notice the coiincidence until a friend pointed it out when I was in line to pay for it.  $1.50, total, well spent.  (I rarely indulge the boys their requests at the thrift store since most of the toys are so junky, but this one I couldn't resist.)

We're off car-camping for the weekend in the next valley over between us and Glacier Nat'l Park...not in such style, though.  We'll be in a minivan.

Happy weekend and happy trails!

Creating and Crafting Dolls

Creating and Crafting With Dolls, by Eloise Piper and Mary Dilligan.  Published May 1994.  ISBN # 0801985242   

There are really only a couple of basic doll patterns here, with endless ideas on how to embellish and dress them.  I made these as well as several other dolls from the patterns in this book when R was a baby. 

Japanese Craft Book 3

Easy Embroidery, published November 1984.  Price: $6.95. 105 pages, 48 of which are like these above, and the rest of the pages are traceable outlines of the same, with descriptions of which stitches were used where, as well as a short guide to basic embroidery stitches.  ISBN# 0870406086

Japanese Craft Book 2

New Embroidery for Beginners.  O.K. so this one I've actually used as a reference book.  It has 13 pages of different embroidery stitches with examples of how to use them, plus some pages about applique and needlepoint, with sampler projects for all of them including, of course, the requisite cute bag project.  Price:  $4.50.  Publishing date: February 1986.  ISBN# 0870407023