This photo of an Italian peddlar and his produce was taken in San Francisco before 1909. But after 1904.
After the worst of RWL’s writing comes my choice for the best. I am not including the Little House books. My opinion is that the most she did with those was heavy editing.
Rose would strongly disagree, but from a reader’s point of view, “Woman’s Day Book of American Needlework” is her most easily read AND least depressing work.
Rose wrote a number of articles on needlework for Woman’s Day. (Sidenote, Woman’s Day began as a shopping circular in the A&P chain of markets.) The articles served as an advertisement for the book. Very little difference in copy between the magazine and the book. The narrative is a combination of history, handicraft instruction and economic principles. Many color and black and white photos throughout. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri is credited with owning a few of the needlework items pictured.
Rose excelled in this format, one that she may have felt was simpleminded. She seemed determined to ease many facts down the gullets of the Woman’s Day readership.
Crafters and knitters report that the instructions do work. I am not a crafter, nor a knitter.
Rose had done a previous series on needlework for Woman’s Day in the 1940′s. Those articles were strictly needlework instruction without history. Illustrations were line drawings with the mathematical graphs used by those who can figure out those things.
