Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Work from this end

I have long meant to show you this awesome vintage baby wool, which I bought a few years ago at the Value Village in London, ON. There are five balls in total. I'm a little scared to actually start knitting something with them, because I'm afraid of finding out that these lovely little yarn balls have been moth snacks during the last five decades or so. I find the labels and all the attached instructions and reminders very charming.

24 comments:

Sarah A. said...

I'd probably never use them just because the packaging is so great. Not that something like balls of wool is really collectible but the geeky Graphic Designer in me loves the labels in context on a ball of wool.

Allison said...

Those little tags are really precious. I'm also loving your slippers in the last post; it looks like they have a heart on top of the toe.

Chris said...

I wonder how you could sandwich them between glass as an art object...

ingrid said...

I love that it's "Patonised."

I'm going to try and work that word into my regular vocabulary.

Steph said...

very cool. I'm curious, is it indeed "fine" and "soft"?

Veronique said...

I agree that this is an objet and doesn't necessarily need to be used for knitting. And the phrase "shrink resist" cracks me up. Resist shrink!

Bethany said...

Oh, I love the "WORK FROM THIS END" tag!

Anonymous said...

My mother found some very old skeins at her Value Village and gave them to me and when I opened them up to knit them, they had been moth snacks, so I had all these 8 inch pieces. It was sort of sad, because it was such lovely yarn.

Anonymous said...

I'm not normally a fan of not using yarn, but those are simply too cute! I'd display them just as they are - they're a treasure!

spajonas said...

my god, THE TAGS! they are lovely and brilliant!

Montreal Mama said...

Love the tags!

I wouldnt use it for the risk of Moths as well!

Will I see you tonight at knitting?

Anonymous said...

So precious! And not in that annoying way. :)

Mandy said...

How charming they are. :)

Kwana said...

Oh it's so sweet. Thanks for sharing.

Daphne said...

Oh man! Your yarn is talking to you and I'm jealous.

Anonymous said...

From the depths of my ancient brain I seem to recall "Patonised" as treated and possibly moth proofed. If you are unsure, wind the balls all up on a winder, or at least hand wind one up.
It's too cute to leave in the stash, and you could always keep a sample with the tags in your knitting journal with the pics.

lomester said...

Those labels are so cute!

Anonymous said...

If you ever decide to use the yarn, you can always save the labels and put them in a frame. I love the "Work from this end" label.

nina said...

I love your blog and have never posted a comment, but I just had to post a photo of some similar vintage yarn with end-tags. I found a batch of Nomotta sock yarn that must be from the sixties at least, and the end-tag has a picture of the company mascot, 'Constance Color,' It's so surreal, and when I saw your post I was really happy to have a reason to put up photos of it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24884562@N06/sets/72157604179275130/

nina said...

oops, I think I might have coded the link wrong.

this should work.

pamela wynne said...

well, even if you start and find that the first ball is motheaten? You can get a shadowbox and just display the rest in all their awesomeness.

Jodi said...

So neat! The labels would be great on a bulletin board in your craft room/study/wherever you knit.

Anonymous said...

If you use the freeze3days/
microwave10secondsperball/
repeat3x/ziplockbag system, you can then wind one ball and find out.
I did that with some old yarn and found some breaks but not many, so I did Russian joins to link the pieces.
(But mine didn't have such cute labels.)

Scrappy Raven said...

If you use the wool keep the little labels they're so lovely. You could put them into some kind of memory frame or a scrapbook.