Show and Tell: LJA

It's the new term back at school for Lesley's Girls juniors and we have had the usual badgering for show and tell items to be carefully packed up... anything from a sticky conker, to a Disney Frozen doll, to one of our 1950s vintage camera's in the shop!  And so inspired by the youngsters we thought we would do our very own "show and tell" series, every now and then we will share a special vintage item with you.  It may be something we own, something we're selling or something we have borrowed.  

So here is our first Show and Tell. We warn you now it's a bit sentimental and we make no apologies for that.

These initials, or almost these initials, appear in our logo.  It is a needle book made by our mother Lesley, when she was a child.  And as you may have spotted on our logo the lady is sewing an embroidery hoop on which are the initials L.J.A. which happen to be our mothers full initials. Our mother is who the shop is named after.

This needle book is small and nestles away in her old jewellery box in my bedroom.  After our mum died it was in the home sewing box at our dad's house, then Susannah (the other half of Lesley's Girls) took it to her own home, and then more recently she passed it to me as apart from photos we don't have many things left from my mum (the odd book inscribed with her name, her jewellery box, an old jumper she knitted- just a few bits that survived and hung around, deemed too special or meaningful to throw away or pass on) so those things that remain seem to move between us all.  

I don't know if the needles contained within it are the same ones she put there, or if Susannah ever used it, but I certainly have never used them. They remain contained inside it untouched, either a little memento of our mum when she last used it, or a memento of the wonderful skill she managed to pass on to my sister, her daughter.  The case says almost nothing about her except her initials and her love and skill of sewing, but it is something I always associated with her and so will always be special to me.  

Seeing something like this also draws parallels to vintage finds I get in the shop... that set of hand painted 1930s coasters, that well used evening bag, those stashed away newspapers from no special ate in 1923 (why save the paper on that particular day?) or the dance cards from a ball in 1912- they special to someone once, did they inspire the same reaction in their ancestors or did they just get lost?  Why were they the items that slipped through the net? The word vintage is great to describe these items, but somehow when you see a real person behind the item the word is completely unable to contain the fact the emotion that could be attached to these items.

Anyway, we promise our next show and tell will be something amusing, or random, or downright pointless.  Or maybe all three. 

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