12 Dec 2010, Posted by admin in EAT + DRINK, 2 Comments

A Salty, Spicy New Life For Vintage Crochet Trivets

Trivets, Resurrected

There’s one problem with making homemade flavored salts, a ridiculously affordable gift, for all of your cooking-obsessed friends. Those bow-tied plastic food storage bags are functional, but they really aren’t terribly snazzy. And sure, that stash of 40+ year-old spice jars from my grandmother’s pantry would have been the perfect gift vehicles, but I wasn’t about to part with my prized food find of the year (sorry, friends, I love ya, but…). Actually, the second-best food find. My mom and I also uncovered piles of my great-great aunt’s crochet work while cleaning out my grandmother’s house this year, including dozens of trivets in surprisingly fantastic colors for what was otherwise very “beige” crochet years.

Better Than The Plain Old Plastic Bag

My great-great aunt was a professional dress maker who must have crocheted every moment she wasn’t making 1950s hourglass and swing dresses (My mom and I both kept several dresses, which are currently air drying after multiple moth ball-inspired trips to the dry cleaner.). Many of her hundreds of crochet pieces — literally — were large tablecloths, sofa and lampshade covers, and intricate bedspreads in neutral colors.

Read: Heading straight to Thistle Hill for period decorating purposes, a historic home under my mom’s purview at Historic Fort Worth (Ya, the preservation thing runs in the family, be it food or buildings.).

But my great-great aunt also made smaller pieces, including dozens of trivets. Many of them were in pretty bad shape after they had sadly been left out on a back patio for over a decade — not a wise idea in Fort Worth, where the weather ranges form freezing temps to over 100 degrees and humid. But the brightest colored of the bunch fared remarkably well (Something about being more cheerful?).

That Vintage Teaspoon Scoop Touch

They were a fitting homemade holiday gift wrap to bookend 2010 that came with a pretty great bonus — It’s amazing what smoked paprika and spicy peppers will do to get rid of a lingering moth ball scent. It worked so well, I might have to try that on our moth ball-tinged dresses, as surely at a dinner party it’s better to answer “Aji peppers” when someone asks “What’s that smell?”. Surely.