I hit the motherlode.
We had a visit from Ma and Pa Snook today, who are in town for the GreenX gardening expo. They also had some presents for us. Since Rodd’s grandma recently went to live in a nursing home, she was giving away a lot of her old craft stuff. I scored dozens of knitting needles along with a sweet denim needle roll, a stack of old craft magazines and pattern books, and a very large, very heavy framed needlepoint tapestry of a naked woman reclining on a rug with a whippet. I am not kidding. (We’re hoping to hang it on the wall facing CouchCam.) But anyway, I started flipping through the magazines… and my jaw just kept dropping. For a connoisseur of tacky knitting like myself, this is a friggin’ treasure trove. I could just post one a day for the rest of the month and be done with NaBloPoMo. But for now, I’ve picked the very best one to start with. It’s from the November 1, 1972 issue of the Australia Women’s Weekly, and it’s entitled “How to make DOLLS and Dolls’ Gear”. You aren’t going to be believe this.

Yes, that is an “Island Doll.” He’s made out of felt but his skirt and “necktie” are knitted out of raffia. (Yes, he has a grass skirt.) I like the way they’ve set him up to leer at the Aryan doll. And are those white bits on his face meant to be a bone in his nose?

There’s an almost-equally shocking Golliwog doll on the back cover that I’m saving for another day.