Making Changes

The weekend has flown by and I have had no time to do post. I am so busy trying to get my office in order ready to relocate my business to my new office on our home block and one day flows into the next. I rarely get to bed before midnight and on most nights find that I  need to read or write on the computer to swing my mind away from all the stress I am under at the moment. I did have some really good news tonight about my move and this has made me feel so much better but still know the next few weeks will be tough on me. Edna and Vera would not have approved of my late nights and long days. Edna would have understood my need more than Vera but both were quite strict about keeping regular hours. "Early to bed, early to rise makes one healthy happy and wise" Edna would recite quite often! 

Edna had an entire library of sayings in her and she would use them every day. It was her way of making sure you remembered the lessons she taught and also her way of making sure you knew if she approved or disapproved of your behaviour. She clearly taught me the sayings well as I find myself using them much to my own children's amusement. I do not remember Vera using these sayings and I have often thought about the difference that these two women's childhood would have had that meant that although they grew up in the same era it was clear to me that Vera had been raised as a 'girl' whereas Edna must have had some very strong female role models and a great deal of intellectual challenges presented to her. Edna always read every day and every night but I do not remember Vera reading apart from the recipe books or the odd letter, she listened while my Grandfather read but I cannot remember her reading a story to me or her reading a book or even much more than the local news or the personal notices in the paper to find out who had a new baby or who had died and that was it. Edna on the other hand read and such a wide range too. Farm magazines on how to hand raise calves and the Stock Journal from cover to cover, Country Life when she could get it and English Women's Weekly as well as the Australian Women's Weekly. Then there were poetry books especially Wordsworth (possibly because one of her ancestors was his teacher) and the Lakes District Poets. She did read the paper but from cover to cover including the stock market and we always had to listen in to the ABC news on the radio. Edna read to me she was always reading out aloud and although she did read Beatrix Potter she also would read out the stock market reports or a description she found about the north of England. Nana did not go to England until she was in her seventies but one would easily think that she had lived there such was her way of life. Edna was so good with children of all ages and as we grew up into young adults she was still keen to communicate and although we did not always agree with her she always listened. She could be very opinionated and quite firm and she did have strict moral boundaries but if some moral issue presented she got on with it dealt with it and it was over as several of my cousins who were raced down the aisle as soon as she knew of them being in the 'family way' Vera on the other hand had such limited tolerance of moral issues that one could find themselves sent to Coventry never to be spoken to again for even a sip of wine and we all knew that we would be sent to hell for sure if we dared to consider sex outside of marriage! Perhaps that explains why my Mother was so intolerant! 

On the day that Edna was tragically killed I had spent most of the day with her and had actually spent most of the previous week with her so I look upon that time as very precious. The things she said then will stay with me forever and they seem so much louder in my head than most because I am sure she wanted me to hear! One of the last things she said was such a summarisation of the way she lived her life when she said to me on trying some new food at special party we were at, "Well M I learn something new every day of my life even at my age and you are never too old to learn" I am sure that this was her attitude to life mind open to that around her taking it in and trying it out. I just cannot remember Vera being like that! 

I want to start loading up some photos and recipes and crafty things that I have of Edna and Vera's but so far I am rather time challenged. Can't wait though to put some of their heritage left to me in here it is the perfect way to make sense of it all and leave some of their heritage to my children and of course to anyone else who may be interested!

Begin the Begin (as they say)

Over the last months I have had so many thoughts of changing my life to enable me to focus on those things that are more precious and more important than all else. I want to have more time to enjoy my home and family and more time to spend on my creative urges and remove as much stress out of my life as I can. This is not going to be easy and it is going to take some months, perhaps as much as a year to arrive at the place that is in my mind now! I do have another blog where I record my day as a travel agent and you can read about it here so this one is for the future, for my new life I am going to build. It will always be a bit of travel as I cannot take this out of me but it is going to have more art and craft, more home life, more about my family and me and more about the good fortune I have had in my life from the influence of two amazing women, my Grandmothers. Let me describe them. 

Edna

Edna Annie was the eldest child, born in 1905 in a small country town not far from Ballarat, to parents who were chasing music careers. My Great Grandparents I am sure were dreamers who had been brought up with privilege and were often not that practical which I am sure helped to shape my Grandmother into the strong and practical matriarch she became. Nana lived for over 80 years; her life came to a tragic end when she was killed by a hit and run accident. She was still a tall strong woman and a very capable one who was still helping her family and community and still self sufficient. Her influence on my life has been profound and not a day goes by for me when her memory is not alive so successfully did she train me! 

Today we have brought back the 'vintage' into vogue and I am sure I can here her chuckle. Every craft magazine, every craft blog and every Martha Stewart show with recycle, vintage and retro segments and articles I read and view seem to be a rewind of Edna! (with a touch of Vera May but more of her later) Make you own soap! Edna was doing it most of her life. Make your own gift wrap well Edna was famous for recycling gift wrap and ties. Turn an old pair of jeans into a skirt well Edna had mastered the art of revamping clothing before she was out of her teens! I remember as a teenager in the sixties wanting to have the latest swinging Carnaby Street or  Bonnie and Clyde 'Sharpie' fashions and Nana would be able to find a piece she had put away that could be adapted to help me out. She was real twenties girl and rising hemlines did not upset her in the way it upset my parents. 

Writing about Nana is going to be hard because I have so much on her and there is so much of here around my home. I have her hand-written recipe book started more than 80 years ago and her mother's treadle sewing machine that she also used with drawers stuffed with her notions, the club chairs she had are in the family room much loved, I use one of her glass mixing bowls and some of her baking trays and there are some special pieces of clothing in my wardrobe. I guess you could say I am a hoarder but there is no way I could discard these things as all are used and are practical items. The best way I have decided to record her memory will be to take a day as it comes and post in my blog her recipes as I use them or read them and post the things she taught me as I find myself recalling them. Edna was my paternal Grandmother and if  I was not staying with her during school holidays I would almost always be with my maternal grandmother Vera.

Vera

Vera Ethel was born in 1906 and as one of 14 children had no option but to grow up being frugal and with a strong desire to hand it down and pass it on recycle and reuse and find a good use in what ever it was she had around. Waste not want not is such a good way to describe her but as a family we would often comment when she could not be found that Mumma 'was out digging up rabbits' (and she could have been doing just that!) Mumma had strong words to say on what she thought was right and what was wrong and I do not recall ever discussing Carnaby Street with her! In fact her influence on me came about before I turned 11. Once I became a teenager it was not a passage of life that she could grasp and it was my Grandfather that then stepped in. Vera died suddenly in 1980 when she collapsed under the clothes line as she would still working flat out (though most in the family were not sure what she was doing much of the time) She was practical, yes she was but at times her timing was not! One could find Mumma cutting up fruit picked up after a windfall from where ever she had been (over the fence quite often) for jam when she should have been dressing to go out and that included times of great importance such as one of my Auntie's weddings. Mumma left you very much to your own devices and expected you to bring yourself up as fast as one could because once you were out of nappies that was it as far as she was concerned apart from two things close to her heart. After evening meals and before going to bed she would organise a lesson in needlework. the kitchen table would be cleared and my Grandfather would be reading lessons or marking books or taking notes as he did of his day's work as a teacher and school inspector and I would be sat on the stool with cushions next to Vera while she instructed me in stitching. I did not really see her use this skill on articles around the house though I do remember she made some flash peg bags. These lessons were the same she gave to the primary school students she taught needlework to. The other thing was her commitment to the Women's Christian Temperance Union which meant she would pack each grandchild off to camp to learn the evils of alcohol for our twelfth birthdays only to find much to her horror that we would shortly after have our Confirmation and take altar wine and so she would refuse to attend! More of that story in another post.