A Treasure from My Hope Chest

I feel so blessed to live in an age when the daily work required to keep house is easier. The amount and difficulty of the work in past ages was staggering. My grandmothers labored endlessly in ordinary household tasks that take me mere minutes in comparable time.  In spite of the difficulty of keeping up with ordinary tasks, homemakers have always found time to work on special projects. These projects often involved adding beauty to a functional object used in the home, but sometimes a woman might create a truly unique item, one that would make some room in her home lovely and bring special pleasure to herself and others.

I can only assume that was the case when my grandmother made this little crocheted teacup. There is no other use than to bring a bit of beauty to a shelf and a certain satisfaction to her soul. Grandma Clements was an expert in thread crochet. She made many, many crocheted items, including these teacups, which she often gave as gifts. This one came to me several years before I was married. I enjoyed seeing it on my bedroom desk and later put it with other items in my hope chest. It now sits on a shelf in my sewing room, where it continually reminds me that I, too, can create beautiful things.