Treasure

I feel like I can honestly say I have very few treasures.  Objects that I value immensely and have a significant story or usage for me to really treasure them.  I'm confident of this because almost 6 months ago I left my homeland and had to carefully decided what was coming with me to my new land.  I did leave a couple of treasures behind....but as I felt a piano and a tent could be replaced/upgraded again I didn't hold them as a treasure to be kept.  Here are the things I did bring with me and one thing that was hand made for me by my husband, the stories go with the pictures...so I guess this is a photo story blog of treasures, in no particular order.

1. 

The pocket sized waterproof cover bible.  This little gem has travelled!  It replaced another pocket sized bible I left in a church in Derbyshire many years ago.  I love that it is bright blue ( I can always find it), it's small, it's waterproof - I have it out a lot so it's withstood a lot of use!  I scribble in it's sufficient margins, highlight and date things, have sticky notes all up inside of it and knowing that many people do not have this or are not allowed to read it means that it is more precious than ever.

2.

I must have been about 19 or 20 when I had this strong desire to purchase a guitar, it came to me in a dream and feelings of urgency, that it was an important thing for me to do...within a day of this epiphany I received a check in the mail for £300...with it I headed to tin pan alley in London's Covent Garden music district....mecca for guitar lovers and musicians.  I spent the whole afternoon walking around a store manned by a very helpful young Canadian.  I had NO idea about how to buy or play a guitar.  I went on gut instinct and started sniffing the wood and looking for something that had been crafted beautifully from a decent wood.  All those years of playing the fiddle I knew something...  This is what I chose, a cherry wood sided Luthier, unvarnished and called a dreadnought for it's deep giant curves and sound.  This has also travelled the world with me..literally managing to sneak itself into carry-on to the disgust of the other passengers!

3.

My bamboo knitting needles were purchased in two stages prior to me leaving my little island.  Although I haven't owned them very long, they have been a source of great comfort in the move, some thing that my hands can keep busy doing....a way to create....a reminder of taking a trip with my mom to the crafting section of her favourite store.

4.

These cowboy boots became mine in the winter of 2001/2002(a present from my mother)...they were worn at a very special concert, where I met some famous TV personalities and drank beer with Luke Doucet and Melissa McCleland (a now married couple of Canadian musicians)....I got married in them in 2008....they are really good boots and perhaps a premonition that I was going to marry someone from across the pond?  Funnily enough I value their waterproofness more than anything!

5.

The only home item that I have, passed onto me from my mother, from her kitchen.  This beautiful set of wooden handled Sheffield Steel knives and forks.  There wooden handles are so smooth and nice to hold, there blades and colouring ever strong and clear.  Something that was made well and was in my mothers home, now in my own.

6.

This was  a gift to me on my 21st birthday, accompanied by a tent!  The tent I had to leave behind.  This is a road atlas of the world.  This is no ordinary atlas.... this shows all the major roads in every country on the planet.  If you took a trip to China..I can find the road you drove down ( in print not on google earth).  At the time this was just the most awesome gift and still today I love maps and taking this out to pray over the nations, to find routes and use this a tool for people to explain their travels.  One of my most precious treasures....the whole world in one place!

7.

My parents friends gave me this bear when I was born(they were also my parents friends who I liked the most- I wonder if that had anything to do with it).  It became my treasured bear.... he was renamed Cuddly, his tag called him Barnabas.  It's hard to explain the attachment I had to my bear...to anything bear like as a child..koalas, pandas, polars...if it was a bear I loved it - I didn't play with dolls at all, they actually to this day freak me out a little?!  Now I live in bear country it's well, still a fascination..but I am more of a realist!  My bear came with me..he's lost a lot of fur and stuffing..but it's just so cool to have something that has spanned my whole lifetime...journeyed with me.

8.

I have always wanted a walking stick?  I just used to think they were really cool ( are you getting the idea that I may have watched too many Grizzly Adams)!  I had hoped someone I loved would make me a walking stick one day....I was pretty amazed when my husband went of to find the perfect branch and spent hours with a carpenter friend learning how to crafts and treat a walking stick for me.  YES  I love it, yes it is the best gift...we've hardly used it as it was sat in a cupboard while the wood rested for a year and we travelled the globe...it's seeing a lot more action these days.

9. ( pics all the way through this post)

I have always thought the American patchwork quilt a beautiful tradition.  I decided to try and make one of my own, way before I'd even visited America, it was a small sewing project I started years ago with my babies in mind.  I did finish it eventually and now it sits on our kitchen bar stool for extra homeliness ( amazingly the only thing our relatives would have liked to have taken away with them)!  Maybe I should make some more!  It's not well made, it's not even made with the disciplines of a traditional quilt maker, although completely hand sewn.  I do however feel very proud that I started and finished this project and it is now a useful and beautiful piece of art in my home.

10.

This is my hymnal from school.  Also known as a songbook.  It lived in my blazer pocket for many years.  Yes, I was that rich kid who went to a posh school, but everyone wears some kind of blazer,tie,uniform in the UK so it wasn't that weird!  Every morning we would gather together and sing a couple of songs from the hymnal and then pocket our books and file away back to class with all this poetry and passion hidden away in our blazers.  A little book full of old and some what dated praise songs...I would read them when I was bored in class ( often because I finished before everyone else), or if I was stuck in math and couldn't read or hear the teacher who had barricaded himself behind his desk at the longest most furthest point away from all the children!  I would read them at home, in the car, on the school bus....just whenever I was bored I suppose I'd reach in and read a few lines and try and figure out what words like 'shod' and 'throng' meant.  My favourite hymn was number 626, and if I had gone the traditional wedding route..this would have been on the play list for sure!

626: Praise to the Lord

 Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,the King of creation;

Oh my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation:
Come, ye who hear,brothers and sisters, draw near,

Praise him in glad adoration.

Praise to the Lord, who over all things so wondrously reigneth,

Shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth!

Hast thou not seen how thy desires ever have been

Granted in what He ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully, wondrously, made thee;

Health hath vouchsafed and, when heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.

What need or grief ever hath failed of relief?

Wings of His mercy did shade thee.

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;

Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with His love He befriend thee.

Praise to the Lord, who, when tempests their warfare are waging,

Who, when the elements madly around thee are raging,

Biddeth them cease, turneth their fury to peace,

Whirlwinds and waters assuaging.

Praise to the Lord, who, when darkness of sin is abounding,

Who, when the godless do triumph, all virtue confounding,

Sheddeth His light, chaseth the horrors of night,

Saints with His mercy surrounding.

Praise to the Lord, O let all that is in me adore Him!

All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him.

Let the Amen sound from His people again,

Gladly for aye we adore Him.