We will suppose you are interested in cricket. Here comes the usefulness of your book. When the averages of the County Cricket are published you can cut out the list and paste it in your book, and enter in your index, under C, the fact thus: “Cricket, County Averages, 25,” the 25 referring to the page on which you have pasted the cutting. When Brown minor is trying to prove that his county of Kent was third on the list, you will be able to convince him of his error by a reference to the page in your scrap-book, whereon you have pasted a cutting headed “County Championship.” Reserve a few pages in your book for cuttings from the comic papers. You have no idea, until you commence, how interesting and engrossing your scrap-book will prove. In the newspapers there are so many curious little incidents recorded as to swimming, cycling, football, science, which you will be glad to preserve for future reference. Then, any little facts about your favourite hero may well find a place in your book. And when you have filled one book, commence another, and thus manufacture your own library of “best bits.”
Fig. 1., Fig. 2., Fig. 3.
Fig. 4., Fig. 5.
Net Making.—In Fig. 1 we have a netting needle and the way of filling it, in Fig. 2 a mesh stick. The stick may be almost any shape and about nine inches long. It regulates the mesh of the net, for the mesh is twice the circumference of the stick, so you may make a coarse net for tennis or a finer one to protect your strawberries, or a hammock net, or any kind you wish. Fix a hook into a wall or door, or in some other similar position. Take a piece of twine, a foot long will serve, tie the ends together, and hang the circle A thus made over the hook as in Fig. 3. Take the needle in your right hand and pass it through the loop. At B hold the loop and the twine that comes from the needle. Now cast a turn of the twine so that it rests on the upper part of your left hand and wrist, and also over loop A. Next pass the needle in an upward direction, pulling slowly and finishing with a tight knot. What makes the knot is shown at Fig. 4. In Fig. 5 the knot loose and tight is shown.
Fig. 6., Fig. 7
Slowly as this is done a time will come when you can do it rapidly. When you have tightened the knot, hold the mesh stick in the left hand, lay the twine over the stick with the knot resting at its edge, as in Fig. 6. Pass the needle through the loop that has thus been made, pull the twine firmly round your mesh stick, then throw a turn of the twine over your wrist and so make the same knot again. Throw the twine once more round the stick and make one more stitch through our old friend loop A. At this stage slip all you have done from your mesh stick, and you will find two half meshes attached to your loop A. In Fig. 7 these are shown as 1 and 2. Treat 1 and 2 as you treated loop A, that is first in 2 make 3 and 4 in 1. Now you have your first completed mesh, 4. Mesh 5 also is made on 1, the knots being one on the top of the other. Now go on in the same way, making the meshes in the order that you find them numbered in Fig. 7. The taking of two stitches through the last mesh of each row is the widening process, and this operation is maintained to the end of the net as far as the top edge is concerned.