* *: Heirlooms From My Familes Loving Hands

My Tribute to Mary, Lucy & Shirley

You should blog .….. my teacher said !

So this blog site is my tribute

to the creative women in my family tree,

Mary, Lucy & Shirley.

Mary is my Great Grandmother

And this is her embroidery sample

Young girls in centuries past practiced embroidery stitches on samplers, fashioning motifs, alphabets & verses, even though this sampler is plain & simple it is something that

is precious & loved dearly.

I wonder what Mary would think about her sampler hanging on our Dining Room wall

over 200 years later ?

Amused, puzzled, embarrassed or maybe delighted that it has survived all this time,

I hope so !

Lucy is my Grandmother

My Grandmother - back row second from the right

I am fortunate to have a number of creative embroidery pieces from my Grandmother which once again take pride of place on the walls of our home.

They create an archway of love along

our very long hallway.

My Grandmother was naturally left handed but unfortunately this was associated with "badness" from the time of the middle ages

She was forced to use her right
hand which makes her work truly outstanding, I think.

My Grandmother holding my Uncle

One of my very favourite cards I received from her reveals the ongoing battle to write with a legible hand all of her life.

So sad, but so courageous !

Shirley is my Mum

A typical country girl from Liston near Tenterfield in New South Wales,

Australia

My Mum worked in a Bakery in Brisbane
as a young women
and I am sure that all that pie making
and cake baking in that shop
helped my Mum become
quite a good cook.

Brisbane by night - 2010

I remember my Grandmother coming over
for a day of baking & cooking together
& the delightful
aroma that greeted us at the door when we
came home from school.

I must confess that if we could get the day off
from school on a baking day we would.

The delights of the day included

rolling pastry, eating pastry,
cleaning out the bowl of leftover chocolate

cake mix along with the spoon or beaters.

Fights were known to break out if another
sibling was also home on the same day
which was not a good thing as there
never seemed to be enough
“leftover’s” to go around.

After all that baking

Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

were sometimes on the dinner menu

followed by a delicious

Bread & Butter Pudding = Yum !

I guess that all that cooking has had a major
influence on my love of cooking today!