Show & Tell Friday

Thanks to this blog for making me pull out a special treasure. My grandma recently died & her china cups & saucers were distributed to the granddaughters. My cup doesn't match the saucer & I don't know the story of how my grandma came by it, but it's a very sweet cup & saucer & I love it. (Especially more so because of the pink on the cup!)

Bequeathments and Coathangers

I love special coathangers. Old wooden painted ones, coloured ones, fabric covered (padded and non-padded) ones, crocheted ones. One of my earliest, nicest memories is of being given a hand-made rabbit coathanger, which I still own.

My late grandma apparently either liked crocheted and special coathangers also. (I also think she probably just thought they were more practical for looking after your clothes). Well, for whatever reason, she obviously had been collecting them from op-shops and wherever and in a roundabout way, I 'inherited' them when she died. It is a varied collection which I shall enjoy arranging in my wardrobes.

Now, this is a very special collection next, which I sort of 'inherited' and by proxy at that. This nanna is not really mine, and has only moved on in the physical, not metaphysical, very final sense.

It is a treasured store of crochet cotton, all different weights and colours, with a few crochet hooks in the mix. There is even an unfinished crochet-edged handkerchief. Do I dare to attempt to finish it? It would be an honour of sorts to finish it, but I think I need to improve my crochet skills first :).

Grandmothers and secret recipes

My sister has taken on the mantle of the family special-pastry apple-pie maker and I have been bestowed with my great-aunt's famous Christmas pudding recipe, which I am going to attempt much earlier than Christmas :). One day my great aunt will not feel up to making 20 Christmas puddings for all the related family groups & then what will we do? (My grandma stopped her pudding and fruit-cake making years ago).

I dream of finally getting the secret family recipes for my dad's partner's Christmas fruitcake (with pineapple, carrot and pecans?), and for the iced tea I drank while staying at a bed & breakfast on Staten Island, where the lady comforted me as I sat crying in her kitchen (long story, that one :)).

Wouldn't it be terrible to die and not pass your secret recipes on? Or to have no-one to pass them on to? I found it quite amazing that people even die (as in, in hospital, not suddenly) with no-one even really knowing that they are there, let alone coming to say goodbye or spend time with them. That may be terrible naive of me or something but it really never occurred to me before. I am finding this incredibly depressing.