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!