The shawl hasn’t been growing much of late, what with my push to finish up the sweater. It has been growing, though. Some. Actually, I’m only 1½ repeats away from finishing up the center motif, which means I’m a little more than two-thirds done with the center portion of the stole. After the center portion is done, the first motif will be repeated. Then I get to have a little fun with the border. I’m really looking forward to doing the border. Since I started this thing I found another vine pattern that looks promising. It just might end up wrapping itself around the outer edge of my shawl.

While I was taking picture of the shawl, I thought it would be good to put a yardstick down next to it, so you can see how long it is in its unblocked, unfinished glory. Then I took another look at my old yardstick. There are a number of these things scattered around the house. You just never know when a yardstick will come in handy. They tuck themselves neatly into little corners of closets, easily accessible, yet out of the way. Like this one. This particular yardstick I’ve had all my life. Seriously. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t own this narrow strip of wood.

Let’s take a closer look at this wonder from the past, shall we? First off, its original intent was clearly as an advertising giveaway for Bunster & Saxe’s Sterling Furniture Company. The store name and the three locations are on the front of the yardstick, right under the numbers.

When we turn it over, the advertising intent is even more clear. There’s nothing very useful back here—with the exception of ¼, ½, and ¾ yard marks—unless you want to go to or contact one of their three stores in San Francisco, Oakland, or Vallejo. The street address and telephone number is there for each location. What I love are the phone numbers. As far as I know, this way of commonly referring to a telephone number (MArket 1-1780) went out of style before I was born. But I’ve always known about it. Probably mostly because of having old things like this around the house when I was growing up. The San Francisco and Oakland phone numbers are both seven-digit numbers, with the first two digits noted by a word that also gave the dialer a clue as to what part of the city the business was located in. But back then Vallejo was so small that it only had a five-digit telephone number. Kind of cool, huh?

Because I have a curious bent, I thought I’d try to find out if the Sterling Furniture Company is still around. With a simple Internet search, I found out some interesting information.

Someone on eBay has an old Sterling Furniture advertisement up for sale. The ad clearly states that the company was established in 1878. The San Francisco street address is the same as on my yardstick.

Mr. Harry Saxe had been in the furniture business for some years before he and his partner, O. C. Bunster, purchased the Sterling Furniture Company in 1911. This excerpt, from the “History of San Francisco 3 Vols” published by S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, 1931, about Harry Saxe says that Sterling was original founded in 1868, while that advertisement clearly states that it was in 1878. Oops.

In 1953, Sterling Furniture was involved in a labor dispute.

There no longer appears to be a Sterling Furniture in the San Francisco Bay Area. But there is one in Salt Lake City, or that’s where the company is headquartered, anyway. And they don’t seem to have a web site, so I don’t know if it’s the same company in a different location, or a different one completely.

I enjoy reading things like this about the past—a fact that would boggle the mind of any history teacher I had when I was in school. It doesn’t make my yardstick work any better, but it does make me wish there was a date on it. It’s one of those old things hanging around my house that I love. The research gives me another little link to the past, making things like an old furniture company, the people who ran it, and the people who shopped there, like my grandparents evidently did, come alive again.

Edited to add: I got so wrapped up in the past I forgot to show you my other Ravelry ad. I even caught it on one of my “my notebook” pages! I’m thinking that I need to put together an ad for one of my sock patterns, and get it out there, too.