From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Tomorrow is my father’s birthday and this afternoon, my Grandfather let me send my own telegram. I wrote it out myself but when we got to the telegraph office then he said that maybe we should write it out again, not because my handwriting was bad but because the telegraph man wasn’t used to reading it and Grandfather said that I could also put the telegram I wrote into an envelope and send it to my father so he could see the message in my own handwriting, so we did that too. I also made a beautiful pen wiper for him. Aunt Tillie taught me how. You put four nails in a used-up spool of thread and then you wrap yarn around the nails and keep pulling it through the hole in the spool. It is called a cat’s tail; it doesn’t look like a real cat’s tail and this one is very beautiful and the colors are pink, blue, and lavender.
Apparently pen wipers were Hilda’s gift of choice. She wrote about making one in her January 11th entry. For a video about modern “spool knitting,” which is also known as “corking.”