Sky-Blue Pink

     From time to time I beg for craft supplies.  After using a bunch of leftover quilt batting for my Ikea chair restoration, I decided to use fabric and batting scraps to make quilts for cats at local animal shelters.  The shelters take knitted and crocheted blankets for cat cages, and the animals take these blankets with them when they go to their adoptive homes.  Maybe the shelters would also accept little, patchwork quilts.  While I have an abundance of fabric and batting, there is a scarcity of thread around here.  I put out the word that I would love to have old, partially used spools of thread.  Any color would do, even sky-blue pink.
     That was one of my father's expressions.
     "What's your favorite color, Dad?"
     "Sky-blue pink."
     "What color is that?"
     "Look at the sky."
     "I don't see any pink.  It's just blue"
     "You will.  Keep looking."
     I have met my fair share of people from various backgrounds, read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies and television, and I have never heard anyone use the term sky-blue pink except my father.  How did this expression enter Dad's vocabulary?
     The term first appeared here, in the United States, in the late 1800s, in clothing advertisements.  It was used to indicate that there was a large range of colors available for sale.  Later the term sky-blue pink was used by Howard R. Garis in "Sammie and Susie Littletail," a children's story that he wrote in 1910.  Other children's authors picked up the term and included it in their writings.
     By the 1930s, the Brits got hold of the expression and further embellished it.  British versions include sky-blue pink with purple dots, sky-blue pink with yellow spots, and sky-blue pink with a heavenly border.  Since my father was billeted in an English boarding home during part of World War II, I'm betting he picked up the phrase from his landlady, a woman of whom he grew fond and with whom he corresponded for many years after the war until her death.
   
     Thanks to World Wide Words for the following article:

     http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sky1.htm