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Monday, January 11, 2010

Thinking of Rose DeSoto

Some years ago I happened onto a rummage sale at a youth center. My husband had been volunteering there, and they were having the sale to raise funds. Now, far be it from me to pass up a rummage sale, you never know what you might find, but I never go into a sale like that with many expectations. It's much more satisfying to come out feeling very excited with a unexpected treasured purchased at a great price!

So I scanned the various knick knacks and such and found my way over to the piles of books. I noticed a book about crochet, and figured I'd start there, with the crafty looking books. They were standing on a table, leaning against the wall behind. As I started flipping through them, I noticed that behind the bigger books, closer to the wall, were some smaller pamphlet type books and a plastic bag with a couple balls of crochet thread and some tools in it. I had only recently started tatting, and I suddenly realized I had hit a jackpot. Well, a jackpot for me, anyway. There, beneath the plastic bag of goodies, were three older books , two of them dedicated completely to tatting, and the other a smaller version of a needlework how-to book that I can remember my mother having when I was a child.



Each of the books had written on it in the name of the original owner, Rose DeSoto, and although I'll never really know for sure, I've always felt that bag of goodies, which consisted of a couple balls of crochet cotton, a couple tatting shuttles, various crochet hooks and a few other odds and ends that I can no longer remember, belonged to her too.

I don't know who Rose was. I've no idea the kind of person she was or how she lived her life. I don't know how these things of hers ended up at the sale. Of course it's fun to imagine.... Did she get tired of tatting and figure... out of sight, out of mind? Or, more likely, did she pass away and these things, not of interest to anyone else, put in a donation box in hopes of finding a new home?

Everytime I pick up one of these books to see if they might spawn some new idea for me I think of Rose. Then I think of who might pick up one of my books one day, one of my shuttles, one of my crochet hooks. Will they look over all the shades of orange thread I seem to collect and wonder what I was going to do with them? Will they wonder who the heck I was?

I hope they don't tat up a bunch of orange doilies!