Heirloom Laces

This Jarbo yarn is pooling in a peculiar manner, vertical stripes so far. I am into the second repeat of the Monkey pattern and am enjoying knitting patterned socks for a change. I have made one pair of lace socks and a few Blueberry Waffle socks, but most of the socks I make are plain.

We are slowly putting the bedrooms back together. We have a large IKEA chest of drawers in the girls' room, and during the recent construction activities the bottom drawer jammed in the open position. I was taking everything out of the drawer to see if I could fix it (yes, I could) when I found the big bag of linens from Grandma G that my mother-in-law gave to us. This particular batch of linens were sheets and pillowcases with handwork. The knitted lace is sewn to pillowcases and is knit of a very fine but very strong cotton thread. It is paired on the pillowcases with a band of drawn-thread work. I would say that these are around 100 years old.

Another pillowcase is trimmed with this insertion of crochet. I like this design because it is crocheted onto a length of commercially-made braid which you can see in the middle of the insertion.

These items are in such good condition that they were probably considered too good to use everyday. As a result, they just languished in storage for most of their life and turned brown on the edges of the folds. I am going to have to look up info on laundering such old linens because if they can be washed successfully, they should be used and enjoyed.