Treasures from the past, garage storage, mystery item

Nope, no way to fix it to a surface by screws or pegs. Maybe a tube of super glue, but nah.
I think I'll look up heckels, maybe there are baby non pegable heckels.

sometimes heckles have heavy bases and are held down with one hand while one flails the flax with t other

I think I relate it to garden because it might have been kept in a pantry cabinet (built by Charlie of course, very good cabinets in memory, great sliding doors) that had some drawers for garden stuff that didn't go in the garage.

Snort, then there was the DDT sprayer......

ok, off to google.

Aha - I'm just starting looking at google images, but this looks like a modern version, though mine doesn't have holes for pegging, and they spell it hackle:

Seems to me I saw a backscratcher (at least I think it was a backscratcher) that looked like the article described...

...when I was touring the Tower of London. It was laying right next to this great metal sculpture of what looked like a woman.

Anything to do with the expression to get your hackles up?

Ah, this is more like it, but mine is ever so slightly fancier - and very very much smaller.

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1800s-early-signed-b-hareyl-flax-hackle-maineatticfind

It's so small. Could it be a flower "frog" or a wool comb?

Maybe a flower frog, thanks for mentioning those, that would make sense. (I've never used one, ahem.)

You're right, Punkey. Excellent! Mine is similar to this one, except of course, it's rectangular.

http://whilewearingheels.blogspot.com/2012/09/vintage-flower-frog.html

flower frog makes sense, its small like the one you've described. A heckle or a wool carder would be waay too big.

Flower frog makes perfect sense!

How do you use a flower frog??

Ossobuco
Cleaned out my garage and it looked so clean and empty and now it is full again. Two neighbours are using it for some of their stuff.
It is ok I can´t get my car in anyway.

I'll have to look up proper flower frog usage (we used to have a floral designer, Tico, here at a2k, miss her). I think that it works well with thick stemmed plants, to keep them in the order you hope to maintain in a vase. I've either done devil-may-care gatherings of flowers/leaves, branches, or sort of dramatic very big bouquets (learned from my old gallery/studio business partner who was extremely good at that), but in neither case using flower frogs. I should show some of her big bouquets, just terrific. Especially the cat-0-nine tails.

My car hasn't been in the garage here, poor thing, but it only has snowed a wee bit in the few years I've been here. But Sweden!!!! I picture it snowing a lot.

Heh, I bet you have a Saab. My friend Krista has only had Saabs for years - she was born in Estonia, spent time in Sweden before arriving in the US in her teens. I met her in my first class at the university we both ended up in.
Meantime I have a good sturdy old Volvo.

On the westcoast is does not snow that much. The Golfstream is floating by
No I do not have a Saab - I have a VW.
At my summercabin I have an old Volvo. But honestly I really do not like Volvo. But they are more or less undestructable