Things.....

I LOVE things...especially OLD things.....here are my recent EBay purchases

A mattress needle and button hooks

My lovely scissors, a "stiletto" and teeny tiny bone handle crochet hook

 Button hooks were used mainly in the Victorian era as they had so many buttons on boots and gloves that it would have taken hours to do them all up without these little implements.  They are now mainly used by the disabled or elderly.  A couple of these have advertising slogans on them...one for Dr Lovelace soap and the other for Wood Milne shoe shine.  I would like to have met Dr Lovelace, I imagine he had the nurses swooning!

I need to investigate further on the black handled one as it may be made from something called "BOG OAK" hmmmmm...interesting.  

The scissors on the photo to the right were the main thing that attracted me to the listing as they have really pretty handles.  the blue object to the far side is a Stiletto or point turner. It may be Bakelite or modern plastic, I'm not really sure how to tell. It is pretty AND useful anyhow, so I shall keep it.
I think the hook at the bottom is a lace making hook, rather than a crochet hook as it is teeny tiny. I need to look more into the difference between bone and ivory as I am not sure which this is.

Pretty handles

Metal crochet hook, bone crochet hook, "travel" crochet hook and a bone bookmark

Tape measure

 I was hoping that one of these may be a size 4 crochet hook but the only contender is the bone one second from the left. It has a nice barley twist to the end and time will tell what size it is when I start using it!


The tape measure is unusual in that it has the brass stiffener on the first few inches.I have searched around on the Internet to find out why, but to no avail...
UPDATE: I have since been told by my mother in law that the brass section of the tape was used to measure the inside leg for gentlemens suits so that tailors did not have to put their hand up another chaps crotch!!

Some of these may find their way back onto eBay at some point, but if they don't sell, there is a box frame waiting for them!