Through the Generations...

 I have been thinking a little bit about family heirlooms and what is passed down through the generations. As you will see,  I'm not just thinking about things, but talents and characteristics...  Recently I came across the company Patience Brewster, an American company which is family run, taking advantage of talents within the generations. If you're not familiar with the name, Patience Brewster specialises in handmade figurines, whimsical ornaments, and stationery. There are some lovely things on the site, designed by the very talented mum, with the business run by the children.

I love the penguin!  Some of the designs are too fairy-twee and whimsical for my tastes, but I do really like the stationery in particular.


 So while thinking about the heirlooms and antiques and family treasures, I came to the conclusion that actually, there's not a great deal in the way of "things" that has been passed through our family. Mum has certain tea services that were her mum's, and her grandmother's before that.

One a little like this:

and another Minton one,  like this...






There is the oak table that Mum said I could have, but I've never quite worked out how to get it from Liverpool to St Just, but hopefully, one day, I'll get it out here.
But there aren't that many "things" that have been passed through the generations.

So what else has been passed down from mother to daughter...?

Artistic flair, perhaps? Mum used to do the most beautiful calligraphy - I once found a book that she had designed using a poem by James Elroy Flecker as inspiration. Full of the most amazing callgraphy and art work. It inspired me to take up calligraphy too, and maybe that creative spark has been passed down to me...I certainly love creating things, from zentangle inspired art, to cards, to calligraphy. I don't think I'm as talented as Mum, but it's certainly something I enjoy doing.

I'm not sure Nana was particularly artistic, but my Nana knitted - oh, boy, did she knit!? And crochet. But knitting was definitely her forte - she always knitted us school cardigans and jumpers, as well as other garments. I was often requesting different pullovers, and  I particularly remember a brown-and-yellow striped polo neck, something like this one:
and another in pale blue/navy blue stripes. Maybe that's where my love of pullovers comes from! And I still have the granny stripe blanket that she crocheted for me when I went off to college 33 years ago.
This isn't it...but it could be:


Mind you, looking at the wobbliness of the blankets that I knit for Spanish Stray Cats, I'm not totally sure the knitting gene has been passed on to me! Here is Darcy modelling my blankets:



The only pullover I ever knitted for myself was a fairly comprehensive disaster, ending up so huge, due to who knows what failure on my part to check tension, or something technical like that, that I had to sew about a third of it into the seams!

 I suppose the thing that is the most precious that certainly ties my Nana, my mum and me together is a Christian faith. Nana went to County Road Methodist Church, and brought mum up in the Methodist denomination. Me, my brother and sister would be dropped off at Nana's on Sunday, and we'd be taken along to Sunday School at County Road. I can remember singing "Hear the Pennies Dropping" and "Wide, wide as the Ocean..." and it is from those seeds that my Christian faith grew.

Mum went to Old Roan Methodist Church, and when Nana moved to live with us, that's where we went too. We used to take part in the Scripture Exams every year - I can't really remember what these consisted of, but this certificate looks familiar