Look what I've got! - the tools edition

How I managed not to post about my new pinking shears for so long is beyond me. (I bought them on June 3.)
They're from Ikea, and they were quite cheap, so I hope they'll last... but they certainly work the way they're supposed to work, and that's most important now.


But my best finds come from my wonderful crafty grandma. She's quite a hoarder (now I know where I got that from! - although father's an even greater hoarder) and she seemed delighted that her hoards find a use after the years...

She asked me whether I could do... a kind of embroidery. Sorry, I do not know the English term. Madeira? Eyelet? I said I had tried and could not get it quite right. She asked whether I had an awl. That she could give me one.
My heart jumped at that. I'd wanted a tailor's awl for a while already. Never quite got around to ask in the local shop whether they had it... and now I didn't have to!
Grandma set out to find an awl for me. And couldn't find it. And found lots of other things instead, mostly vintage or even antique.

Like needles.
Tiny needles in a lovely tiny needlecase.




I love seeing how things were made and used decades ago... the needlecase is just a piece of paper, a bit cut there, folded there and there, probably a bit of glue there, but it works very well! Although I do not know how old these are, I think they're really quite old.

So must be this needle threader - I love how it has its own tutorial on itself!




And a set of tools for netting, or maybe tatting, or something like that. Could be used for weaving, too, I presume.



I could take all these.

And some fantastic notions and hardware were unearthed, I'm going to share those in separate posts.

And finally she found the awls, too.

I got this one:



A lovely smooth wooden awl, and most probably antique, something other women in my family used to use... I love that feeling. Knowing that I continue in a tradition. (Which is, by the way, also the reason I'm veeeeryyy sloooowlyyy learning how to do bobbin lace.)

She kept these:



Made from bone. Awls, and what's probably crochet hooks, and a needle case with its cap plus one separate cap without its needle case.
I love this piece:



Grandma says there was probably a crochet hook inserted in there - it's a handle. With screw-on cap which would keep the hook in place. Lovely. Who makes this kind of things nowadays? Nobody, I'm afraid.

Anyway, from my previous post and the photo above, you know I've already put the awl to good use. :-)

And you could obviously see how excited I am about all these things. Just count the words "love" and "lovely" in this post!