Father’s Day is this Sunday, and if you are wondering what you can give as a gift, Isabella may have the perfect suggestion for you.
Today we might call Isabella a “crafter.” She often repurposed simple items, such as cardboard boxes, and refashioned them with glue, fabric, and bits of ribbon or lace in order to make something useful and pretty. On her writing desk she kept a pen case and mail sorter she had made.
She often wrote how-to instructions for making simple gift items to give. In 1892 she published the following idea in The Pansy magazine for readers who wanted to make “something for papa”:
I am sure of one thing papa will like, and it is something which you can make with some industry and very little expense.
I do hope you know how to knit—the nice old-fashioned knitting which our dear grandmothers understood so well? If you do not, my first advice to you is to master that fine art which has of late years gone so nearly out of fashion; it is coming to the front again, and there is no end to the neat little comforts which you can make with the aid of a ball of tidy cotton and two large knitting needles.
I will not attempt to teach you the stitch on paper, though if you sat by my side I could show it to you with very little trouble. If there is not a dear white-haired grandmother in your home (as I hope there is), borrow one from some friend, and beg her to teach you how to knit.
Having learned it (which I am sure you can do in an hour), get two large-size needles of steel, or ivory, or wood (I like to use wood) and a ball of the very coarsest tidy cotton you can find, and set to work. Cast on as many stitches as the needle will conveniently carry, and knit back and forth, back and forth industriously, until you have a strip a yard long. Oh, it will require patience and industry! But I told you that in the beginning, you know.
Having finished the strip begin again, and make another precisely like it; then a third, and perhaps, if your needles are not very long, a fourth—you might consult with mamma or Auntie as to that. When the four are finished ( in order to be sure to have the article large enough we will say four), fold the side edges of two neatly together, and knit them together with a crochet hook, or sew them with a needle and some of the tidy cotton, as you prefer.
Add the third and fourth in the same manner, and when all is complete if you do not have a bath towel which will please papa better than any Turkish towel he ever bought, I shall be astonished and disappointed.
For fear of discouraging you at the outset, I mentioned a yard as the length, but let me whisper to you, entirely in confidence, that if you should make it a yard and a half long, or even a trifle longer, papa would like it better still. You see, I have heard the gentlemen groan over short bathing towels, and I know all about it.
You see with how very little expense such an article could be made, and I really do not know of any one thing which will add more to the comfort of the bath. Some gentlemen like very coarse and rough bathing towels, in which case macramé cord is sometimes used instead of tidy cotton; probably mamma could advise you wisely in this direction, also.
If you undertake such a gift, I hope you will have the kindness to write and tell me how you succeeded, when and how the gift was presented, what was said, and all about it.
Your friend,
Pansy.
Isabella Alden 