Last week I finally had a good excuse to go to Cincinnati and while I was there I stopped in at the Salvation Army. There was a bunch of craft stuff but it was mostly yucky acrylic in atrocious colors. But then there was a collection of knitting needles all wrapped up in a bundle. Since the Salvation Army is a big fan of bagging things and stapling it shut, I couldn't see exactly what was in there. But the price was only $2.99 so I grabbed it.
I couldn't even wait to get home and opened the package in the car and look what I found!
The grand total was 10 pairs of vintage plastic single-pointed needles, 11 pairs of aluminum single-pointed needles, 22 plastic double-pointed needles, 13 aluminum double-pointed needles, 10 steel double-pointed needles (judging by their weight and rust), 2 aluminum stitch holders, a plastic crochet hook, a very long-handled (10") wooden crochet hook, a plastic stitch holder, and a plastic thing that appears to be for holding embroidery thread (one tab for each color).
The needle sizes vary, but are mostly smaller than about a size 5, particularly the double pointeds which are mostly around a size 1. The double-pointed needles rarely make up a complete set, at least not a set of 5 like modern sets are. Some were duplicates for my collection, but many are sizes I was lacking because I have yet to venture into the small-needle stuff.
As far as I can remember, my mom taught me to crochet somewhere around the fall of 1981. That means I've known how to crochet for about 26 of my almost 33 years. Anyway, for some strange reason I still own my first ever effort at crocheting a scarf. When I realized it was narrowing, I just decided to make it a triangle. This may appear to be a hat, but let me assure you that it is simply a flat triangle. For some reason I wasn't willing to rip it out but I was willing to waste yarn by making something so useless.
