Excerpt from Rules and Directions for the Use of Finlayson, Bousfield Real Scotch Linen Crochet Thread

Amongst vegetable fibres adapted to the use of mankind in the fabrication of garments or coverings, and for ornamentation, flax occupies a conspicuous place, both in respect of extended application, and the antiquity of its use. The Phoenicians and the Egyptians were proficient in flax culture, as well as in linen manufacture; with them "purple and fine linen" were synonymous with refinement and wealth.

The skilful manipulation of the flax fibre was well understood and practised by the children of Israel. In Tyre and Sidon, as Isaiah tells us, "they work in fine flax, and weave net works." In all subsequent ages as history shows, flax has been grown, spun, and woven: it has been worn by priests, sages, and warriors for attire or adornment on occasions of honor or display. The maids of Athens, the fair dames of Rome, the bonnie lassies of Saxonland and Scandinavia, the beauties of France, have all been familiar with distaff and spindle; and through the long vista of the past have tuned their ditties to the merry whirl of the spinning-wheel. Show one of these homely implements to any New Englander past middle age, and a flood of eloquence will be unloosed. You will soon learn about the sister or the mother whose ready fingers deftly spun the smoothest yarn, from home-grown flax on the old farm, in the far off days when thrift ruled the household: wild strawberries tasted like strawberries then, and the speckled trout if anything, rather wanted to be caught by the boys, so it seemed.

Our farmers no longer grow their flax for home consumption, and the maidens have lost the art of spinning yarn; and yet flax holds its own in our homes; with netting, knitting, crochet, and outline work as vehicles for the display of its adaptability, it advances to still more artistic forms of service; and it requires not the eye of a prophet to foresee the continuous thread of its use extending through ages yet to come, in even more beautiful forms than any attained in the past.

"And the whirling of a wheel

Dull and drowsy makes me feel;

Gleam the long threads in the sun,

While within this brain of mine

Cobwebs, brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun."

No more fascinating way of filling up the spare moments could be devised than in working out the designs herein given, or in the origination of new forms and fancies in crochet work, or in designing colored outlines upon felt or linen.

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