My grandmothers rug

Remember Lane cedar chests? Your family was suppose to buy you one to start saving for your supposed impending marriage and you were then supposed to fill it with all the handmade dish-towels, napkins and Christmas ornaments you could find or even better make. I really wanted one when I was 14, to start saving for my wedding to some unknown perfect man. I never got one as a gift. No one at my house really understood any type of girl related dreams ,it was a boy house filled with baseball and meat.

At 19  I bought one from a thrift store in uptown Whittier. It was painted black. I took it home and stripped it and refinished it. I still use it today for Christmas stuff and as a coffee table.

I bought my own cedar chest as well as my own daughter purchasing hers.  I hope Haven will take mine if this tradition even remotely exists in her day.

My mother was raised during the depression, taught to save everything for a day when she could use her good stuff....the wine glasses, the good china....even sheets from her wedding in 1954. She also did not have a cedar chest as a young girl. It became apparent to me that these supposedly cherished items would never be used since my mother moved them out to her retirement home in the early 80's from her Whittier home where these items were closeted most my life.

 One day I was at her house in the desert and we were cleaning out her cedar chest, a chest she bought after I got married in 1981( I think mainly because I had one at this point and she did not). My Mom was well into her 80's at this stage of her life and getting rid of things.

Deep down in the chest under the bolt of raw silk my uncle brought back from Japan during WWII that I never stopped hearing about my whole life, was this bit of red peeking out. Oh the things that would be made out of that silk that never were! Until Chelsea finally took it home after my Mother died in 2009.

I pulled out this rug. I had never seen this rug. Odd since I thought I had seen just about everything my Mom owned. I asked my Mom about it. She said she never really liked it....I loved it and thought it was beautiful and it was wool! Of course I could never show the excitement at this find to my Mom or I would never get it, If she knew you wanted something of hers she would give it to someone else (usually the person you liked least sort of her own Karmic Justice).....funny huh?

Now, you need to know that this rug is just one of a couple of items from my Grandmother Teed and knowing that she made it even more special.....so I asked if she wanted it in the givaway pile....she said yes ,so it went in the Goodwill bag. 

I took the bag to Goodwill pulled out the rug and took it home.

I use it everyday.