Herbalicious - I love the Elvis thingy! Would love to see it - Elvis get's blamed for All kinds of things in my family just like "Not ME" from Family Circle. I have 3 garden 'objects' in my yard. One is a frog that my Mom made me - (love him & is extra special since she is no longer with us) and I have a small turtle that has a 'bobbin' head (VERY cute, I just couldn't resist )but I haven't decided where he will go as I just got him. The 3rd is an old iron wagon/tractor wheel raised up in a sqare shaped mini flower garden. I have placed a 3' rooster weather vain in the center of the wheel. The first year I planted r/w/b flowers in memory of my father but now it is a 'catch all' for left overs from the annual flower beds. My daughter cares for it and plants them where ever she wishes and it looks all willy-nilly but is very pretty. I am not a uniform type person -I just plant what catches my eye every spring. I do have an old cast iron bath tub and an old wash machine tub that in hid on the north side of my house for mint. That stuff takes over, if not contained!! They belong to my husband, I guess it is a 'guy' thing??? I plan to put a pond & fountain in my back yard next year but no plastic wild life,(we have wild turkeys, deer, pheasant, grouse, geese and a multitude of other critters) just live fish and vining plants will be added.

Hi from Anne, Actually, the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were not pieced. They were what we call wholecloth quilts. You got the size of the bed with the embroidery kits. Bucilla was one of the kit companies for those kits and I think they are still available today. They had many kits and the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were really popular. It kind of went with the 50's where the people considered all the hand work to be kits. Men often did leather work and copper work (not to say women didn't do that but the men considered those manly man crafts) and the women did tole painting, crocheted bed dolls (they were plastic dolls with crocheted big skirted dresses.), crocheted and quilted potholders and some quilts were made too, but mostly people were trying to get their lives back on track to recover from WWII, and then Korea came along on the heels of WWII. And there was the communist scare, and people were busy building bomb shelters in their back yards. I wonder today how many of those are still intact? We had men returning to work and women leaving the more industrial world, though they did still work, but more things like teaching, nursing and secretarial work. There was a focus on getting women to "act like women" whatever that meant. It meant women worrying about cooking nutritious meals, housecleaning, having their hair look just right, having frilly and basically useless aprons, and very pretty dresses with shoes and purses matching and women wore gloves and hats to church and going out. People focused on banning books. Did you know that there is a list of banned books every year. In the 1950s, I think was actually an attempt to ban Nancy Drew books as being shallow and poor literature, but in reality, Nancy Drew represented the new woman, having a nice car and able to be proactive and solve crimes (they were not mostly what we could consider crimes today). I read them all, and to this day I still could go back and read them again and enjoy them as much as then. A childhood friend and I would read the same books and then act the parts in her backyard of Nancy Drew. So much fun in those days. We did not have shopping centers or plastic (i.e. credit cards) yet, so we traveled on the bus to go downtown, visit all the five and dime stores as they were called then, try on hats and go visit Mode O'Day shops. How many remember those? How truly wonderful they were. And we had layaway. It was exciting to buy something on layaway and look forward to getting it. I guess cars and appliances were sold on time payments. Did you know that the sewing machine was the first thing to be sold on time payments, and within a year of when they came out, some 75% of households had one. It is funny to see a quilt of those times, for often they were almost totally hand sewn, but they would always use the machine to show that they had one for it was prestigious. And they often hired women to sit in the store windows and sew what are recognized as heirloom quilts with fancy quilting (I actually saw an exhibit in Los Angeles of quilts Barbara Brackman, our favorite quilt expert collected, and it had one or two of those as I recall. I always say that because some days I don't recall what I had for breakfast the other day. Chuckles. Well, that era brings back a lot of memories. Gals wore summer dresses that were full and pretty and those underskirts that made the skirts stand out and we had matching sweater sets and beautiful straight skirts with pleats in the bottoms and other beautiful styles. When women wore pants, they often were capris with men's style shirts with sleeves rolled up and the bottoms out with curves on the sides. Saddle shoes and pedal pushers were common at school. And the men and young guys looked so cool with their duck cuts and their cool pink or gray or turquoise shirts and nice pants with belts. No bums hanging out with ugly underwear, tattoos or shaved heads or beards and long hair in braids or pulled back, which comes from the prison crowd. Ask me how I know that. I am a student of criminal justice, and next year when I am almost 75, I should graduate. Whoo hooo! So I see a lot of documentaries and photos of the criminal crowd in prisons, and that is exactly what these guys wear. Pretty ugly. I love the days when men always had nice haircuts and nice shirts and pants and they were all handsome. Have a great Thanks Giving everyone who reads this. I purposely spelled it that way. We can give thanks for all we have and we can give to those who do not. Anne always

What a fun thread! I made the loop potholders as a little girl. I liked to polish sticks up and desparately wanted a rock tumbler but my parents said it was a gimmick and wouldn't buy me one. (A couple years ago i visited CalamityJ and she gave me one, finally!) I was so excited when I learned to sew in 8th grade at school. I taught myself to embroider around the same time, my mom embroidered but didn't sew. My Memere (Mom's mom) did everthing, and very well. I also one of those plastic children's looms as a little girl but I wasn't very good at it. I remember the knitting knobby but didn't do well with it. I just saw some things - necklaces- at the farmers market made out of those "ropes" from the knobby today! Somewhere along the way I learned to knit and crochet, but I prefer crochet. I used to make and sell terrariums in Almeden wine bottles. And I macrame'd in my late teens and early 20s. I had one of those piggy banks made from a bleach bottle made by my Memere. My other grandmother was a cook and a gardener, but she got one of her friends to crochet clothes for a little doll that I still have and love. One Christmas my mom and Memere knitted me a whole shoe box of beautiful Barbi clothes. Memere made my Chatty Cathy an incredible wardrobe as well. I think many of these things are still at my Mom's house. My mom gave the old doll carriage that had been hers and then mine to my niece, her grandaughter, and I haven't dared to ask her what happened to it now that she is grown up. My Memere made a little quilt for it to go with when it was passed on to me, and I wish I had that little quilt. I have some of my Mememre's quilts, and I have an unfinished one that I started for me. In more recent years I decoupaged a lot, especially some lamps. I scrapbooked a lot for several years, now I'm wondering if I should get rid of the supplies. And I have so much glass for the plate flowers and totems, and molds for concrete objects. Now I am mosaicking. I wonder if I'll ever settle on one or 2 things? Kathy

Wow....what an amazing list of people.... too many of them no longer with us or active here. It is nice to remember some of their names and their struggles that we shared. Thanks for the memories.