Recently my daughter, granddaughter and I took a girls’ weekend and went to Pawhuska, OK. For those who don’t know, Pawhuska is a major attraction for fans of The Pioneer Woman. My daughter has wanted to go for quite some time, so we took a weekend and went.
In addition to all the Pioneer Woman attractions, we prowled around all the shops in Pawhuska. It’s a neat little town, and as you can imagine The Pioneer Woman is a VERY BIG DEAL in the town. We ate at The Mercantile (Ree Drummond’s shop, restaurant and bakery), got ice cream at Charley’s Sweet Shop (named for Ree’s late Bassett hound), and took a tour of the lodge (where they film The Pioneer Woman television show).
But this blog post isn’t about cooking or The Pioneer Woman. It’s about something I found in an antique shop in Pawhuska. Now you should know right off that I’m not a fan of antique shops, especially not the ones where it’s divided into several small booths. But, I was looking for something specific, a cut glass candy dish with a lid, so we did some prowling. I did find two candy dishes of the right size and character, so I was happy about that.
The main treasure that I found, though, was this American Needlework collection.
It doesn’t look like much, does it? But it was only $2 and I decided I needed to rescue it. When I picked it up, I discovered that it wasn’t a book.
It was a box slid into the cover, and oh my!
First of all there was a general instruction book.
It’s not a great big thick book, but it’s very small type so pretty dense, with a few illustrations.
The rest of the box contained several folded sheets.
This isn’t all of them, but a sampling of what was inside. Each sheet was folded several times, and printed on both sides.
This one isn’t unfolded all the way and only shows one side! As you can see, these are some pretty large illustrations.
Here’s the same sheet unfolded more, and it’s so large I can’t get a good picture of the whole thing. You can see, though, why I was so excited by this $2 treasure!
What will I do with this? I have no idea. But, I’m glad I saw it, glad I bought it, and will spend some time going through everything. There’s instruction in embroidery, crewel work, cross-stitch, needlepoint, patchwork, applique’, Hawaiian quilts, quilting, hooking, crochet and knitting, weaving, candlewicking and rugmaking. This collection was printed in 1963, so for something that’s almost 6 decades old it’s in pretty good shape.
Will I spend more time browsing through antique stores? Probably not. This was a one time thing, looking for something specific which I now have, so I really have no need to go through more. But, should I have occasion to do so again, you can bet I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more needlework treasures!