In the Beginning...

Everything started someplace and my knitting life began with this spool knitter. I remember he was a Christmas present in the late 1940's. He used to have the word "Czechoslovakia" in blue stamped on the bottom. I made miles of knitted cord with him and quickly discovered that by working back and forth, rather than round and round, I could knit flat pieces. All my dolls had hats and dresses and coats of spool knitted fabric (embellished with feathers from the featherbed [by this time it had become pillows] my grandmother carried here from "the old country", but that's another story), my dollhouse had rugs and curtains. I found a ball of leftover yarn and knit yards and yards of the stuff which I used to make a border that I sewed around one of my sweaters. It got lots of looks and comments, I like to imagine they were all highly complimentary.
I have a small collection of knitting knobs, spools whatever you call them, and I have started this blog to share the information I have and, hopefully, to meet other collectors/enthusiasts and learn from them.

The oldest book I've been able to find on spool knitting is Spool Knitting by Mary McCormack, copyright 1909 by A. S. Barnes & Company and published by Beckley-Cardy Company in Chicago. I purchased my copy on e-bay several (4-5) years ago.
I saw one for sale and bid on it but dropped out when it reached 20 dollars (it went for about $26). I kicked myself later. I would, I reasoned, have paid $25-30 for a new book surely I could have gone that high for a collectible book. A few months later another copy came up and I bid it up to $50 before I dropped out. And again, I thought about it and kicked myself. After all, what treasure trove of information might be in it? So when, a couple of months later a third copy went up for bid I set a whopping $80 as my limit and bid away. It went for over $100- to someone who wasn't me. About a year after I saw the first copy on e-bay a fourth copy was put up for auction. I threw all good sense to the wind and bid on it. This one was going to be mine at any cost. I got it for about $24 (including shipping). I guess all the other crazies already had theirs.
I went googling to see what I could find out about the author and found that the book is now available for free on Project Gutenberg.