Posted on 31 Comments

Deliciously Dated Giveaway

I got the sweetest little surprise in my PO Box a few weeks ago from a flickr friend. In a Random Act of Kindness, she had sent me two deliciously dated pieces of reading material:

  1. A booklet from 1976 filled with knitting projects – mostly big bulky sweaters and a few actual coats
  2. Ladies Home Journal Needle & Craft magazine from 1974, which has knitting, crochet and sewing projects inside

I’m not sure what made her think of me with these things – I am not exactly Retro Girl – but it was strangely serendipitous that she would find these books at roughly the same time that I was on vacation in Massachusetts discovering another priceless gem from the 1970’s.

If the book I found gave you a scary glimpse into retro Home Decor, these magazines should be considered the Ladies’ Apparel counterparts.

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Take, for example, this lovely sweater. Crafted in only the brightest colors of the most synthetic fibers available, this garment should be required wearing for crossing guards everywhere.

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Crocheted bikini, anyone? Holy lack-of-support, Batman!

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Ok, I have to admit here that I would totally wear nearly every piece in this spread. I think I may even feel the “l-word” coming on. Why, yes. There it is –> I love this outfit! >gasp<

I should qualify that. I’d totally wear the main outfit on the left out in public, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in that (or any other) 2-piece bathing suit. The rest of the selections would make great loungewear, don’t you think?

Honestly, I’m so surprised to see something I consider wearable on these pages, I almost forgot I was looking at a magazine from 1976. Let’s turn the page, shall we?

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Whoa! There’s no making that mistake again.

It’s such a kick to flip through these old pages and see what life looked like back then. Even those of us old enough to remember those days don’t always remember the details of the polyester pantsuits our mothers were wearing and the shag rugs we were sitting on while we chronologically sorted our Barry Manilow record collections.

Ahem. I never did that.

Anyway… Who wants to have a deliciously dated giveaway?

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I’ve had my fun (my heartfelt thanks to Mama Sumatra!) and I am ready for someone else to get a chuckle out of these two books, and the Sewing for Your Home book, too. And you know, maybe you can even pull out that orlon/antron blend fashion yarn you tucked away for a rainy day, and knit yourself a sweater coat. You never know…

I’ll throw in a snazzy Polka Dot Cottage tote bag to seal the deal. It’s nice and roomy. I use them for my food shopping all the time, but you can carry around your macrame plant-hangers in-progress, too, if you so choose.

Just leave a comment on this post, and share with me a memory of your childhood. There’s a catch, though. It has to be a very dated memory. In other words, don’t tell me about how you walked to school every day; tell me how you walked to school every day in the 80’s wearing your pink legwarmers.

Tell me how you cried the day your three-year-old neighbor pulled the guts out of your Barry Manilow Live 8-track*, and how disappointed you were when her mother replaced it with an 8-track of Barry Manilow II, because you already had that on vinyl.

Ahem. That never happened either.

You get what I mean, right? Ok, then. I’m looking forward to hearing some great stories! I’ll choose a random winner on Monday sometime.

* OMG it’s available on CD now! Where’d I put that credit card…

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Posted on 31 Comments

31 thoughts on “Deliciously Dated Giveaway

  1. Hate to RT (’cause I wanna win!) but it’s too fun not to –> @lclarke522 New blog post: Deliciously Dated Giveaway http://bit.ly/3dyIO

  2. You want dated memories? I got ’em right here! http://aimeewrites.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/we-girls-can-do-anything/

    LOL, it must be an interwebs theme week or something…

    1. Ok, that was great. And I’ll bet you had a blast setting up that photo shoot, too…

  3. Oh, and THANKS for the hosting the giveaway! I was so excited about showing off my Barbies, I forgot my manners. 😉
    .-= See Aimee’s latest blog post: We Girls Can Do Anything =-.

  4. Wait, lemme get Nell to model the Star Wars t-shirt that I wore every third day of fifth grade. (Because yes, I still have it.)
    .-= See Penny’s latest blog post: A Perfect Recipe for the Tomato Garden’s Peak =-.

    1. You are my new hero. (Says the only girl in the sixth grade who could quote Star Wars word for word. I was so popular.)

  5. LOL I LOVE these books! I have stacks of them, but I would love some more 🙂 I remember having my mom take my picture with a Kodak Instamatic, I was wearing my best plaid shirt, courderoy pants and my prized cowboy boots. I was writing a love letter to Shaun Cassidy and I was going to include this picture, hahaha! Da Doo Ron Ron! I was a study in shades of brown. I’m pretty sure I never sent the letter and I’m sure I have that pic around somewhere…I should go look for that 🙂 That would have been 1977. Thanks for the smiles!
    .-= See Liz (madeinlowell)’s latest blog post: Pincushion – Felted Cupcake, Vanilla =-.

    1. Thank you for helping me realize I was not the only one to pair cowboy boots with corduroy. Your plaid shirt sounds more appropriate than my hand-knit ski sweater, though…

  6. i have great memories of my mom sewing us matching plaid outfits when i was preschool age. after growing a bit, the sewing didn’t stop. for 1976 she knit us all (three girls) blue polyester flowered prairie dresses and hats. just like little house on the prairie.
    .-= See gerri’s latest blog post: ipca retreat, the people =-.

    1. Did you mean that she sewed the dresses? That sounds complicated enough, but knitting them must have taken her all year! Impressive!

      1. yes i meant sew! i must have knitting on the brain!
        .-= See gerri’s latest blog post: ipca retreat, the people =-.

  7. Not sure I wanted the dated reading materials and I KNOW I’ve blocked the memory of all my fuzzy (had a knitting granny) legwarmers from figure skating club…

    Dated memory: Squealing with glee in 1983(second grade!) when I got a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas. Maybe the giddiest, happiest gift getting memory I have.

    I do vaguely remember all the autumn gold glory of my mom’s kitchen before we moved to the city when I was 5. And all the weird baggy shirts and leggings from the 80s. Gah.
    .-= See Elaine’s latest blog post: How Not to Bake Your Clay =-.

    1. I was too old for Cabbage Patch, but just barely. My younger sister got one, and I was surprised to find out how jealous I was, LOL!

      1. My daughter got a Cabbage Patch Kid from her grandparents when she was 4 or 5… and that reminded me of mine, so I went into the ‘Elaine Boxes’ at Mom’s and pulled out mine for her. Not too worse for wear, they sit together in her room.

        And the same knitting Granny, who no longer knits or sews much, had made me scads of barbie and cpk clothes, so the kid is well stocked with clothes for the whole gang.
        .-= See Elaine’s latest blog post: How Not to Bake Your Clay =-.

  8. So many great memories, many of them inspired by y’all’s memories. My first thought was obviously a clothing-related one: of the brown and orange horizontal striped shirt I used to wear (c. 1979), where every fourth stripe just said HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! on it.

    But then I remembered the time I ordered a Dynomite magazine from the book club order at school (remember that? With the grade-appropriate magazines?) because it had an article on Scott Baio on it, and I had a HUGE crush on Scott Baio. And then tried to explain the magazine to my parents (who, as far as I remember, had not asked for an explanation) by telling them that I had gotten it for the article on coral reefs, which must have been very transparent, because I have never, before or since, expressed the slightest interest in coral reefs.

    Amazing that a girl who had still likely not heard of Playboy had nonetheless mastered the “I just read it for the articles” defense.
    .-= See bzzzzgrrrl’s latest blog post: Enough about me; what do you think about me? =-.

    1. Haha, that’s great!

      Your shirt reminds me of the t-shirt my parents got me for my 9th birthday – it was yellow with a picture of a worm in an apple and it said “rotten kid.” Our class trip to the zoo was on my birthday that year, and I remember opening the shirt over breakfast and wearing it on the trip.

      I don’t, however, remember being insulted by it. I am now, though. I think I owe my mother a phone call. Bwahahaha!

      1. I should think you would be, now that you know that SOME people’s parents were buying shirts that said HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! on them.

        HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! HOT STUFF! may be weird and inappropriate, but “Rotten Kid”? That’s just mean. 🙂
        .-= See bzzzzgrrrl’s latest blog post: Enough about me; what do you think about me? =-.

        1. Heh, yeah, and that same year I got a hand-me-down shirt from my cousin that said “spoiled rotten” (which, ironically, neither one of us were at ALL). 1980 – the year of the “rotten” shirt.

          Hot stuff. That just cracks me up!

    2. Dynomite magazine–yes! Always a quality publication. I still have the Dynomite cover with the Sweathogs on it. AND my special Scholastic exclusive Star Wars poster, of course.
      .-= See Penny’s latest blog post: A Perfect Recipe for the Tomato Garden’s Peak =-.

  9. I was an adult in my childbearing years during the 70’s. I was the one making those leisure suits. Thought they weren’t such good days when I lived them, but now that I’m older they don’t look so bad. I really didn’t care much for the styles then, but I see copies in today’s styles.

    I had the first Barbie-that’s how old I am-sometimes in the early 60’s is when they came out, I believe.
    .-= See Marty’s latest blog post: More Pictures of Those Raspberries =-.

    1. Barbie turned 50 recently, so probably late 50’s is when she came out.

      I didn’t mean that you had to post about the 70’s necessarily – I am happy to hear about any decade that had amusing fashion and fads (which, let’s face it, is just about all of them!)

  10. Well,I’m still very much impressed 🙂

  11. Okay in 1975 I was 22 (okay everyone, do the math)and granny dressies (maxie dresses with puffed sleeves) paired with daisy love beads were raging in my area. A friend of mine and I were asked to do a photo shoot with a photog friend testing a new camera (that used *horror* 35mm film). When the photos came back, let’s just say granny dresses were over for me…EEK. When I saw all the maxie dress this year I had to cringe. LOL. Good times.

  12. Funny, I just saw a bunch of these in the thrift store today. I passed them up for the more recent Piecework magazines though!
    .-= See Suzanne’s latest blog post: He’s in Love =-.

  13. Two words: white Keds.
    All the cool kids had them and it seems I always got my new pair RIGHT as it started to rain each fall. We all tried so hard to keep them spanky clean and white, thoughtfully scrubbing each night at the edges of the soles and the little blue tabs on the back.
    Oh, and then when we graduated to the high-top Keds. Wow, were we something?!

  14. […] the way, don’t forget about the giveaway still going on.  I’ve been enjoying reading everyone’s memories.  I’ll be […]

  15. Oh, childhood memories, buying Smash Hits magazine (I was in the UK so not sure if you get it in the US?)and reading the lyrics with my friends, inventing dance routines to “I will survive” and “Funky Town”, a cassette player for my tenth birthday was a HUGE present and then I played the same song over and over rewinding the tape so much it got distorted. Thanks Lisa for getting me thinking and realising how much fun I’d forgotten about.
    .-= See Emma’s latest blog post: Life on the Island =-.

  16. I remember going to the beach with my sister in our matching Mork from Ork swimsuits (I wish I could find a picture). As I recell they were blue with rainbow suspenders and buttons printed on.

    1. Oh my, I had no idea anything like that even existed! That has to be one of the most disturbing (and completely great!) things I’ve read, LOL!

    2. Yeah, this is totally my favorite.
      .-= See bzzzzgrrrl’s latest blog post: Enough about me; what do you think about me? =-.

  17. […] Deliciously Dated Giveaway, chosen randomly by BOG and Flufy!  Congratulations to bzzzzgrrrl for her HOT STUFF memory.  I’ll have your goodies on their way to you shortly after I photocopy that one outfit I […]

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