White Threads

On Christmas Day my great aunt was telling me that she’s going to have to downsize from her house in the coming year. She’s a very spritely 80 something year old, but she wants to move somewhere smaller before someone has to move her!

She invited me and my husband to visit and help her with her clean out. She has lots of family antiques and knowing that we have a house that’s about 100 years old and have furnished it with antiques that we’ve collected from various places (certainly not at great expense to the management!) she thought we might be interested. I said we’d really only be interested in small things because our house is full, but that we’d love to have some things passed down through the family.

Yesterday we and the girls went to visit her. She had a small selection of ornament-y type things out on the table, but told us that pretty much anything around us was on offer. She knows she needs to clean out a lot of stuff and would be very happy to know that any of it was going to people who would appreciate it.

The first thing we noticed on the table was a little silver shoe. She told us that it used to have a blue velvet stuffed pad coming out of the mouth of the shoe, and it was her mother’s (my great-grandmother’s) pin cushion. Ooh, yes please!

There was also a small metal money box in the shape of a tiny safe. It had a crude dial on the front that turned that if you did it in *just* the right way, the safe opened. It was very cute, and as it used to be my other great aunt’s (her sister) I decided that would be a lovely thing to have.

She had some amazing Chinese vases on the sideboard, which we thought were beautiful, but had nowhere to put. However, underneath them (and everything else on surfaces around the room) there were doilies… Crocheted, embroidered, even knitted lace.

So I asked her, on a whim, “Do you have any other needlework?” She took my husband off to a wardrobe and asked him to get a couple of boxes down from on high where she couldn’t reach them. And so we started going through all the needlework. It was all small doilies and runners. Of course, I wanted to know where everything came from. The best answer she could give me was that Auntie Suzie was an excellent needlewoman and Auntie Essie did a lot of crochet. So probably some of them were done by them, but others were probably given as gifts to her mother, and her and her sister (my two maiden great aunts always lived together until the elder one died about 3 years ago).

I selected a number of very interesting doilies. The girls really liked some of them, so we let them choose some for themselves too. If they’re going to appreciate them as pretty things that have come down through the family, then we’re very happy for them to have some too. Later, after we left, The Reader said “I didn’t realise you were going to let us choose some things. I thought just you and Daddy were going to.” She was really pleased to be included.

Then Auntie Jean took us to her study to show us some cabinets she had. We really weren’t looking for furniture – our house is very small and quite full enough! – but we found we *were* interested after all! She showed us a lovely buffet/sideboard with a bookcase hutch. It was Edwardian in style (same as our house) and made of oak, as a lot of our other old furniture is. It was simply lovely. While we already have a buffet in our dining room, it was a hand-me-down from a friend whose next-door neighbour died and they were wanting clear out the house.

We don’t have a personal connection with the previous owners of our buffet, but with Auntie Jean’s buffet and hutch, we certainly do! It belonged to her father (my great-grandfather). It was in lovely condition, so we agreed that when she’s cleared it out in some months’ time, we’ll organise to pick it up from her. She was SO thrilled to realise that she’d found a home for one of the largest pieces of furniture in the house! (The largest is probably her organ, but we’re not taking that, even though my husband does play the organ – definitely no room for that!)

And then my husband remembered that from the old lady that lived next to our friend, I’d obtained all her old sewing supplies – many many many spools of thread, and little needlework tools and oddments. So he asked, “Do you have any needlework tools or supplies?” Auntie Jean brought out a box, and in it there was yet another little treasure trove. My two aunts have not really been sewers, but there were some interesting things in there, so I selected a few.

Of course, there was the obligatory morning tea, and we had fun reminiscing about the Christmas dinner we had at my great aunts’ house many years ago. Auntie Jean has a very sweet tooth and has been known to go to restaurants and skip the main course and just move on to dessert! On this particular Christmas, there was a small main course of salad and ham, and then came out the NINE desserts! Let’s be clear here, there were probably only about 15 people at the most there for the meal! Auntie Jean’s cousin Gail kept goading my husband into eating more of the desserts. Actually, not just goading him, but dumping stuff on his plate and making him work his way through the whole nine desserts. It goes down in history as one of our most amusing family meals ever!

Now Gail is well known in our family as being a bit eccentric. She goes to a lot of auctions and buys trinkets and ornaments. Apparently she has cabinets-full in her house. Everyone knows about Gail and auctions. But yesterday Auntie Jean also told us that her brother, my great uncle, also used to like attending the auctions, which we previously did not know. One that he attended, there was a lot that included about 8 brass instruments. Some were in working order, and others were not. He bought the lot and then had to get them all home – on public transport! I can’t imagine how displeased I would be if 8 brass instruments suddenly walked in the door with one of my children! Auntie Jean said that he offloaded some of the non-working ones to a plumber friend, and the others just eventually went…

So we had a lovely morning with my great aunt. She’s a bit of a favourite with our girls because she always gives them such fun gifts at birthdays and Christmas. She just seems to know exactly what our girls would like. I think she’s just a big kid at heart!

Perhaps before I go away on the cruise in February, I will set up a series of posts to show you some of the more interesting doilies that I got from Auntie Jean yesterday. That might help fill in the time until I get back!