Testimonials

A few weeks ago, the lovely and talented but blogless Lenora gave me a copy of Needle-Art and Health Book:

Probably from the early 1930s, it was published by Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. Not surprisingly, given that it was 40 proof yet legal during Prohibition "for medicinal purposes," Lydia Pinkham's was pretty popular stuff.

Mixed in with instructions on how to embroider a daisy stitch or use a meat platter to trace a doily are page after page of advertisements and testimonials for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound and for other Pinkham products: Lydia Pinkham's Blood Medicine, Lydia Pinkham's Liver Pills, and Lydia Pinkham's Sanative Wash.

The woman clearly was a master marketer and the testimonials are a hoot; mothers dosing their "run-down" daughters three times a day; women recommending up to nine bottles for nerves, weakness, soreness, backache, bearing-down pains, sick headaches, discharge of whites, lassitude, derangement of the womb, brown spots on the hands, sterility, change of life, or just for feeling "fagged out."

Drink enough Lydia Pinkham's and you too could have health and vigor.

In that spirit, here's my testimonial:

I bought a ball of Dyeabolical Yarn's DK weight merino in Firefly. It was a beta dyerun, so the color way was a little different. I begged for it so badly that Rachel stripped it off the needles from working it into a scarf and sold it to me then and there. It's since been frogged and knitted again three additional times. Let me tell you, it still looks great.

I need to get another dose as soon as I'm done with this one.