Collections by A. Robin

                          3/6/2014 

Anyone that knows me knows that I love scarves and pins. Vintage costume pins and scarves from old Aunties and great Grandmother’s jewelry drawers. Given by friends and family, all find homes with me. I currently have 85 scarves; oh wait maybe closer to 100 counting winter scarves and belly dancing scarves. They are all types and colors and origins, all with stories. 

I started loving scarves in high school. I do not remember my first scarf, but I think it was a blue bandana, like the bad boys on motorcycles wore. Thankfully, I matured along with my choice of scarves. Friends in college starting giving me scarves – Paula brought me back a scarf from France –it is wild block colors on a black background. Christine gave me an orange mohair scarf from Scotland –it itched me something awful, it I loved the color and the weave. I lost that after 20 years, I still wonder where. Later, Patricia brought a scarf filled with Longaberger baskets back from a basket bee in Ohio, I think of her every time I wear it. Bonnie gave me a designer scarf (my first! ) for helping in her store one Christmas.  Chrissy, from Belly Dancing, brought us all scarves from her vacation re-enacting mid-evil times. When my English pen pal, Maureen, went to China she sent me a pure white long scarf of silk for Christmas that year. What a delightful surprise. 

I even found a scarf blowing down the street in Stone Harbor during a Nor’Easter. I stopped my car, put on the flashers and rescued it.  I often wondered what your story was, pretty olive color scarf. 

My Niece spent her junior year of college in Italy and brought me two scarves. A black, oh so fancy scarf with raised flowers on it – it is so formal I can only imagine wearing it in Rome or Paris or in some large Cathedral where covering one's hair is the custom. I have never worn it except to dance around the house. The other scarf she gave me was a very large red and white with Italian cities on it –I love it and have worn it over my shoulders or outside on my coat.  For Christmas one year both nieces, gave me a sparkly black winter scarf, I like it so much I wear in year round.

I have bought scarves for myself in Scotland –a beautiful woven blue the color of the sky over the loch’s we passed on our coach tour ,that is a winter scarf. The other Scotland scarf is burgundy in color with clan symbols scattered all around. Later, in Ireland, I finally got to see the beautiful colors from the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. Never having passed a Gift store I did not like –I purchased two scarves a blue and a green thinking to give them as gifts –I still have them.   

When I went to Alaska in 2011, we had to fly in early to Fairbanks because our county was being evacuated due to a hurricane. Our trip didn’t start for two days, so we stayed in a motel in down town Fairbanks. The weather was a beautiful autumn day and walking around we found a little thrift store boutique. I didn’t see much to interest me and was just about to leave. When I saw this trash bag with scarves sticking out, I asked about them. The owner said her partner had just bought them at an estate sale and she had to go through and price. I sat down and for the next hour went through hundreds of scarves and bought about 10. I like to think of them as my Alaskan scarves. Their story is; they are on adventure back to the lower 48. I do not remember the name of the store or the name of the previous owner. Sometime I think of her as a little old Alaskan lady that would be so pleased her scarves were in a home that cares for them. I threw them in my first wash in Denali and wore them on my trip, but sometimes I think I get a whiff of her perfume. It makes me smile.

I have gotten scarves from my Great Aunts estates –when everything has been picked over and no one wanted the scarves that still smelled of my Great Aunt’s perfume. Old black and white and color images from the 40's and 50's and 60’s, the scarves were captured around their necks in family pictures that outlived them both.  Worn by my Great Aunties in their bohemimun days, when a scarf was needed for ladies to ride in cars. Windows rolled down to serve as air conditioning scarves were needed to keep hair from complete disarray.  I love those scarves all delicate, some hand painted from the islands, all short and narrow to fit around a smaller head and tied or button holed to slip thru to the side of their chin. My favorite scarf is one from 1939 World’s Fair –so fragile –that I rarely wear it.  My Mother remembers she was nine years old and seeing the wonders of her first World’s Fair, maybe it was even a gift from my Grandmother to her sister in law? 

Knowing my aunts they had pins to fasten on the scarf after wind duty was over.  I have some of their pins, no longer sharp enough to anchor the aged fabric of the scarves. I keep trying different ways to sharpen the point of the pin, but for now they are safe with in my jewelry drawer.  

In my thrift store hunts, I am always on the lookout for two scarves. One is from my Alma mater, Penn State and the other is from Stonehenge in England. Money was tight back in college and in 2001 so I guess I thought I could not afford them.

I am thinking about mail order.