Wrapping up a little history-ruler shuttles

We have a new entry on our ’search list’ for when we are noodling through thrift shops and garage sales: Old wooden rulers.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I have fallen madly in love with netting style shuttles and am having a wonderful time upcycling old rulers into shuttles.

Today, I needed to take a little break.

So, I grabbed a couple of the

old wooden rulers that we have

found in our recent travels.

As I was working on carving

the old rulers into shuttles,

I noticed something…

The 2 lower shuttles in the

photo at the left

came from a ruler that

just has inches.

The 2 shuttles at the top of the pic came from a ruler that has centimeters as well as inches. Neato!

That means that the lower ruler has to be at least 30 or more years old, because it’s been yonks since Canada adopted the metric system.

So… when I am wrapping these shuttles up with yarn, I will be wrapping up a little bit of history.

I even varnished the pencil marks into the shuttles. I remember being bored out of my gourd when I was a kid and running my pencil up and down, up and down, up and down, in the channel of my ruler. Obviously, some other child felt the same way. I tipped the tin of varnish to them, and varnished in those pencil lines! Hopefully, that child has found creativity and inspiration – I have!

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

This ruler cracked me up.

I love the ‘fortune cookie’

messages on it.

“Looking Ahead to A Bright Future?”

Oh, yes, please!

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

“Working After School

Or on Your Holidays?”

(Why yes, I did!)

“Ask Our Manager About

A Career with the bank”

(Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea!)

Aside from the  curious capitalizing on random letters, I found the cheerful and oh so optimistic little messages from the bank (also pre-metric vintage) to be rather endearing.  That was a much more innocent time.

Yes, I have totally destroyed the collectability of these vintage rulers by cutting them up and carving them, but I have also upcycled them into tools that I will enjoy working with enormously. So, it’s worth it to me.

It’s win-win.  I get the pleasure of the woodworking time (boy, the wood in these old rulers gets hard over time!) and then, I get the pleasure of the weaving time.

So, yes, let’s go back to looking ahead to a bright future, and in the meantime, we can upcycle all manner of fun for ourselves. yep.