Wading through the marsh of Covid

 I did a little bit of retail therapy to get me through feeling so dragged out by Covid. I bought myself

a batch of old sewing magazines. The ones above are from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I also bought some copies of Needlecraft magazine, a Maine-based magazine  that was published from the very early days of the 20th century until I think the 1930s. Forgive my tiny Covid brain but it wasn't until I looked at the photos that both the old and the newer magazine have the same title.

I have several issues of this magazine which seemed to have had kind of an interesting business model. In addition to featuring ads from various advertisers,

they also had their readers sell subscriptions to the magazine for all sorts of fabulous premiums.

Probably a third of the ad space is taken up with ads for the various premiums you can get for selling subscriptions of the magazine.

I am enough of a consumer goods nerd to take great joy in reading all of the possible premiums available to some eager woman who sells lots of subscriptions. 

Each issue of the magazine has articles on food and cooking, home dec, as well as

ideas for embroidering linens. I have several pieces in my collection of linens embroidered with this bow and garland motif.

I often learn surprising things by reading Needlecraft magazine. One of the first issues I had purchased had an article about tie-dye.

I never would have expected to see spray painting mentioned in the 1920s. 

So many women learned how to make pretty edgings for their household linens or their clothing from these magazines.

I haven't gone through this batch of Needlecraft magazines that carefully but I will share any particular treasures I find as I read during my convalescence.

I leafed through one issue of the 1970's Needlecraft magazines. I don't know if there was a relationship between the older and newer magazines with the same name. 

As I looked at the ads I felt like I was gone into the home of a childhood friend.

I must have seen this ad for the daisy afghan maker a hundred times, or the ad for its cousin.

I was the kind of kid who read every word of ad copy in every single ad in every publication that came into our house.

Seeing these ads from my childhood is pretty wonderful.

Aside from the fact that being sick with Covid just isn't fun, one of the really unfortunate things about getting Covid is that I had to cancel my appointment for tomorrow to get new hearing aids. If it weren't for Covid I would have replaced my aging pair two years ago.  They are now the hearing aid equivalent of glasses held together with packing tape and wire.

I had set up tomorrow's appointment early in October. Tomorrow was the first possible opening. Actually, I was lucky because my initial appointment was for mid-February but someone canceled so I got moved up.

I called to cancel this appointment as soon as I tested positive and left a message on their voicemail asking to help me reschedule. Today I got a call back from the scheduler. She mentioned that today was her first day back at work after her own bout with Covid. she mentioned that her life partner died at the beginning of the pandemic and her father and a cousin died a few weeks later. The appointment scheduler and I both wept together on the phone. 

She put me on the cancellation list.