Almost the end of June

I have been reading in dribs and drabs....and knitting...stupid directions are holding me up!  There is a great book list on the website for The Society for Women and the Civil War. I did find quite a few digitized on google.
http://www.swcw.org/booklist.html

Summer is here....I need a bathing dress

so...I've been doing some research and came across a description of what people wore

American Photographs, Vol. 1

1859 (London)

Chapter XIII, Newport, Plymouth, and the Pilgrim Fathers, Boston.

Oh! ye bathing women of Brighton! What would you have said? – not a bathing women in a woolen dress; not a machine on wheels; not a blue flannel dress to be seen. Long rows of little sentry boxes are placed, forty or fifty feet from the sea, for the use of ladies and gentlemen, who all bathe together!

            Now let us take a look at the beach. Every now and then extraordinarily dressed figures rushed from the sentry boxes into the water, where there were perhaps a hundred ladies and gentlemen amusing themselves in the water at one time. It was a complete Aquatic Bal Costum. There were groups of bathers taking hold of hands, others swimming, - but all in full costume. We saw sailors, Turks, and Hungarians, and others in dresses of red, white, and every colour of the rainbow, disporting themselves in the water. There were two, a lady and gentleman, who particularly excited our notice; they were dressed in grey tunics, with huge red collars and cuffs, and the trousers below the knee were of the same hue, and on their heads were grey and red caps.

            The ladies’ dresses were composed of thick materials generally reaching a little below the knee, and confined round the waist by a leathern belt; they had also Turkish trousers, fastened round the ancle. These dresses were of the brightest colours. Red tunics decorated with eight or ten rows of wide black braid, the collar, cuffs, and trousers trimmed in the same manner. On the head a white straw hat with alternate rows of black and red braid round the crown, and in the front a large bow of the same colours. White and blue dresses decorated with red, black, or blue; in fact, every variety of marine dress, - it only wanted old Father Neptune with his trident to complete the scene. All the ladies wear straw hats to protect them from the heat of the sun, - a most excellent arrangement.    

Found a post Civil War Bathing dress on another blog.... 
http://blog.fidmmuseum.org/museum/2009/08/swim.html 

More about Angola yarn

I came across a reference to "Angola yarn" today.
Tales of the Living Age. 1858
Eddies Round the Rectory. by Owen Varra (fiction)

"Don't you remember the day Miss Cooper advised home-knit Angola stockings as the best for winter wear, and you gave a laughing glance at me?"

Interesting the writer used this wool in home knitting, which means this type of wool/yarn is available for purchase for hand knitting. This yarn seems to only show up for use in stockings. I love when I discover new information and I'm not looking for it. I'm usually on a different quest. Go figure!

Memorial Day Weekend

The start of the summer for many. Living in Florida...we have already had over 20 days in the 90's. That is OK as I'm heat tolerant :)
My vegetable garden is quite productive...we have been eating green beans, yellow squash and zucchini..the peppers and tomatoes are getting bigger but not ready yet...hoping for some watermelons and pie pumpkins in the fall. Oh, and I planted some spaghetti squash and corn. I kinda like this gardening.

We will be hitting the beach today, purchased a "sun shelter" at the sport store...so we can spend the whole day...packing drinks, chips, sub sandwiches and apples. I love waking on the beach and collecting seashells. Will also be bringing a book to read. I picked up a used book published in 1975...few citations...about every day antebellum life. Citations were used less then and it was written by a guy...women's social history is sorely lacking!
I read that term recently..."social history" which differs from "great men/great deed" history as it is about the common man and life.

Well off to make lunch and on to the beach...sun and sand...grilling tonight and tomorrow for dinner.

"Carded together" google search

I am slowly discovering new search terms relating to admixed/intermixed plant and animal fibres. One thing I am learning is to keep an open mind towards research, there are new discoveries around every corner. Technology has created an open classroom on the WWW where we can share information and discoveries.

Knowledge for the people: or, the plain why and because. 1832 (Boston) & (1831 London)

Pg. 213

Why are Angola hose preferred for their superior warmth?

Because they combine worsted and cotton in the closest intermixture of the fibre. the separate materials are first passed through a machine called a picker and blower, to clean and lighten the wool or cotton, so that half an ounce will fill a bushel measure. These are then carded together, by which the intermixture is effected, part of each material being dyed blue and black. It is then spun of various fineness by throstles and mules.

The new American cyclopaedia 1862

Pg. 105

Stockings (2nd col.)

The materials used are woollen yarns, lamb’s wool, cotton, silk, and mixed cotton and wool or Angola.

Fiction but interesting use of what appears to be a common practice.

Tell tale rag, By G.W. Henry 1861

(Moral stories)

Pg. 8

The third master of Tell Tale was a cotton manufacturer at the Pemberton Mills, Mass. By him Tell Tale exposes many fashionable sins of the day, by mixing religion with the world, spiritual and political adultery. This master was a fusionist, a compromiser, as he would card together cotton and wool, give it a beautiful color; weave it into a web, then swear it off upon his customers as all wool.

Heavy Yarns?

Treatise on the art of knitting: with a history of the knitting loom, 1861

"I have used on of your Machines for several months, and in that time have done some very fine worked, and made some very heavy and choice hose."

"I have knit hundreds of pairs of socks and stockings, from the very heavy yarn for the field hand down to the infant's stocking,"

I wonder how heavy "heavy yarn" is? Could it between sport/ DK weight? Hmmmm

Mixing of spun fibres

Reports by the juries on the subjects in the thirty classes into which the Exhibition was divided

Great Britain. Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851,

1852

In yarns made from a mixture of silk and wool (mixed in the carding and preparation), there were samples shown both white and coloured, which, so far as wee were competent to form a judgment, were very good: but as this branch of the worsted trade is comparatively new [1851] (at all events to us). the Jury could not venture to give an opinions as to the relative merits of the different yarns of this class.