TEA TOWEL COLLECTION

TEA TOWEL COLLECTION

This week I'm sharing my grandmother's tea towel collection.  Once just about everyone collected something, and I suspect most people, one way or another, still do with minimalism and "decluttering" being so much in vogue at the moment its almost something one needs to "confess" rather than delight in. Tea towels aren't really my thing but I'm enough of a collector to have some insight into how Nanna would probably have felt about them.

For her tea towels were an affordable way to remember places and occasions, or the people who had given them to her. The tpwe;s are colourful and each one is in its way unique.  As an added bonus, they are easy to pack and store.   None of them have been used, and all were carefully folded and stored in individual bags, so Nanna could get them out and look at them whenever she wanted.   I felt a degree of responsibility to find them a new home with someone who would appreciate them in the same way and am pleased to report that I did locate another tea towel fan was just as excited as I'd hoped to add to her collection.

AN EGG SLICER...PERHAPS

WHAT COULD THESE BE?

I'd love to tell you more about these but other than the fact that we found them in the kitchen, I have no idea what they are, although they function much as tongs, springing open from the pivot on the end.

The best suggestion I've had is that one grips an egg between the two spoon shapes and by cutting into the slots, slice it into even pieces.  I think that would work so maybe it is, in fact an egg slicer??

I love kitchen drawers - they are a treasure trove of UPUOs (unidentified potentially useful objects)

BUTTER PATS

BUTTER PATS

We always called these wooden utensils "butter pats" although I note that they are not only still being made, but are generally known as "butter paddles."
I can remember these from my childhood and they were not new then so I am guessing they probably date from at least the 1950s.

For those who don't know what they are.......the idea is to more or less beat a small piece of butter flat between the wooden paddles and then roll it into a little corrugated curl to be served with toast etc.

When I was (very) little, my mother would keep me occupied with shaking a jar with cream in it until it solidified into butter, pouring the liquid out, adding a little salt, and then patting the resulting tiny piece of butter into shape - and activity which took about half an hour or so without the need of adult intervention. (School holidays??????)

(A bit of a note though, this was a very long time ago and cream nowadays doesn't come basically "as is" in glass bottles so I don't know if it will work with the modern stuff.......mind you it would still take about half an hour to experiment and find out!).