{My Paternal Great-Grandmothers wearing their Lace Toer}

As promised yesterday in my post about Museum Lace Factory - Antique Lace Toer or Poffer, I will now show them wearing their Lace Toer or Poffer. This is a special head covering for the Province of Limburg in The Netherlands from the past century. Both my Paternal Great-Grandmothers I will show here.

This is my Paternal Great-Grandmother (Dad's Mother's Mother) Petronella Nelissen-Smits wearing her Lace Toer or Poffer

What a beautiful embroidery on her collar and on the front of her black dress.

My Great-Grandmother was born in 1866, to give you just an idea of which time period we're looking at.

By Dutch law you hyphenate your name after that of your husband's.

Here in the USA you hyphenate your husband's name after your maiden name...

This is a Catholic prayer card from her funeral. She died on December 16 of 1931 at the age of 65. Probably due to respiratory problems, either asthma or more serious. In those days medicine was by far not as advanced as it is now. 

Her husband was Pieter Nelissen who died at the age of 47, also due to respiratory problems. That made my Great-Grandmother a widow for 16 years.

This is art work from  My OPA - GRANDDADDY,  just click on the link in red. Probably a pencil drawing he did from his Mother.

This is Jacoba Van den Munckhof-Bus who lived for 32 years life as a widow. Her husband, my Great-Grandfather Mathijs Van den Munckhof died at the age of 52. My Opa was only 14 when he lost his Dad...

My Great-Grandmother Jacoba Van den Munckhof-Bus (center) with her two sisters.

Jacoba Bus lived to be almost 83... This is also the Catholic prayer card from her funeral.

Related link:

Museum de Kantfabriek Horst aan de Maas | Youtube video

{Museum Lace Factory - Antique Lace Toer or Poffer}

On September 13, my dear friend Ellie and I did visit the Museum de Kantfabriek 'Lace Factory' in my birth place, Horst in The Netherlands. Quite an interesting guided tour we got, with some tea afterwards. Photos were also made with us wearing an antique lace Toer or Poffer. These were head covers that I still do remember as a child, worn by the eldest women in town. Click here for some info and scroll a bit down. For mourning they did wear  a black lace toer. When clicked on the magnifier glass, you get to see also the info/beschrijving, to the right of each photo; just click again on it! More old photos from my hometown Horst and surrounding towns, you see here.

When as a child, I went to Church it made me quite nauseating when sitting behind such an enormous lace Toer, that hung from the back down quite a length. In order to preserve those pieces of lace art, they kept them in the moth-balls. I have come to hate the odor of moth balls ever since I was a little girl. Okay, here comes a picture (very poor quality though) with me wearing one. We had to step with our foot on a pedal for initiating this photo shoot...

That's me with an antique lace toer and Ellie is standing to the right...

First we had to put a black 'muts' cap underneath the lace toer. All that without a mirror...

Ellie looks rather good in it, the photo is for some reason sharper.

Another visitor is wearing a toer here and Ellie stands to the right...

This is how those photos were listed on their website for downloading...

Indeed this was quite an interesting guided tour and one should realize that up till the end 2006 here was machine made lace being produced!

Tomorrow I will show you photos from my Great-Grandmothers, wearing such a lace toer... Stay tuned!

Museum de Kantfabriek Horst aan de Maas | video Youtube

{Our Canary Island Date Palm + Eco Friendly Tree Ring}

Here I like to show you our Canary Island Date Palm in a planter. We got it for years now and during winter time it goes inside the garage. With our seven felines it was hard to keep them from scratching the soil in the huge pot. Pieter found an Eco Friendly solution for that, at Walmart and it is made from recycled rubber and measures 24" in diameter for only $ 9.87. Walmart seems to have introduced this already in 2008 and now for $ 19.95. Water goes through this recycled rubber tree ring so it works perfect. Pieter had to adjust the size a bit for making it fit inside our planter. He did place the slice he did cut off, on top of the ring as you will see in the photo. The planter came from Home Depot.

This planter stands next to the retainer wall with the fiberglass window boxes with the verbenas. Hopefully for the duration of the month November and than indoors again. For years we could not get a canary island palm due to some diseases but this one I guess is almost twenty years now.