My grandmother made these pillowcases for my mother's trousseau. I don't do fine handwork like this, so I can only imagine how many hours she spent embroidering and crocheting the edging. The pillowcases went from her loving hands to my mother's cedar chest - where they stayed for decades. My mother never used them. I don't know whether they seemed to fancy to actually sleep on, or whether it was residual bad feelings from her short first marriage, or whether she just forgot about them. But I love them. They are old-fashioned and 100% cotton and they make me happy.
Recently, as I was making the bed in the morning, I noticed some extra decorations on one of the pillows. Ball point pen marks! Thankfully, they are on one of the plain great big pillows and not on grandmother's pretty pillows, but still!
Can you see it? I went around for quite a while, grumbling at my small children for scribbling where they definitely should not have been! Later, as I was pulling my hair up into a bun, I remembered that I had stuck a pen in my hair the day before... and I had done the pillowcase decorating while I was reading in bed, my head (and bun and pen) resting against the pillows. Aargh. I think my Grandma Amy is laughing at me for my lovely pillowcase skills.
