Precious Gift

 I've been blogging and vlogging for about a month now and my cousin Libby has followed along.

Hi Libby!

Libby is my dad's cousin (so my first cousin once removed - I had to google that). When she saw I'd been crocheting, she told me about my Great Gran (her grandmother) doing the fine lace too. And she offered to share some of the precious things Great Gran left behind.

The package arrived a few days ago and I was so excited.

Inside, carefully wrapped, along with a bundle of photographs, were these items;

Libby made me the cute mug mat herself. She has inherited the creative gene too.

Here it is with my first tea of the day. Cheers Libby!

Inside the pencil case I was delighted to find 4 antique crochet hooks.

Three of the hooks have caps to protect their tiny ends. And tow of them have etched designs.

Even the shaped end of the hooks is exquisite. I was also thrilled to discover that the hooks have a bit of a point to the top curve of the hook. I was just saying to Mike, my husband the other day that I wished that was how crochet hooks were made because sometimes I have to push through very tight stitches.

I just had to try them out and made a tiny bit of Romanian lace cord with 60 wt thread. Here you can see the hook, the cord and another cord made with 4 ply crochet thread to show the difference.

Great Gran would probably horrified at how marked the thread of the tiny cord is. But my mum said it might wash out, so I'll give that a try. It's only because I'm handling it a lot as I learn.

My great Gran was Beatrice Rice and Libby thinks she is responsible for this lovely hand work.

I will buy an archival bag of some sort to keep this safe. It is very precious to me. I'm pretty sure I carried one just like it as my something old when I got married, that my grandmother gave me. I think I remember her saying it was her mother's, which would have been Great Gran. Unfortunately I don't still have it. We had a house fire in 1998 and lost a lot of precious things. So to have this beautiful linen now is a wonderful blessing.

Thanks again Libby, now I have something to compare my growing skills against. Her tiny, consistent chains are something I aspire to.

Thanks for reading everyone, and if you would like to see more work, and support me in this textile journey, you can also see my videos and subscribe here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbcPLB6osqo

Just copy and paste the link into your browser, and there should be a subscribe button below the video.