Pink rose and lace forearm tattoo

The lace frame on the third floor has been coughing since Monday. Mr Pryce swears it is the damp rather than the gearing, but I know better. I have had my hands in its threads long enough. You will laugh at me, but I have taken to bringing a pink rose from Mrs Oakley's garden every morning and tucking it into the cutter's box, just to see whether the machine minds.

The pattern this season is a fine black Chantilly with leaves running down the border, the kind the Continental buyers pay for by the yard. Ruth on the second bobbin says nobody wants black on a wedding veil any more. I told her the veil wants something to look at, and she called me soft. Perhaps I am. But when the bobbins go still at five and the shed empties, I stand at the window and watch the light turn pink across the rooftops, and I think of the roses your mother grew up the wall of the cottage on Chapel Lane.

Something happened on Thursday I haven't told anyone. The foreman brought up an order for a long tapering sleeve panel, for a lady in Hucknall who wants her grandmother's roses worked into lace above the wrist. I drew it out on squared paper in an afternoon. Pink silk thread, which we never use, and black for the leaves and the scrolling vines that trail toward the cuff. Mr Pryce looked at it for a long time and said, "That's not a veil, Edith, that's a promise." I did not know what he meant until I got home and found I had drawn the rose as I remember it, untidy at the edge.

I am sending you the sample swatch in this envelope. Keep it somewhere dry. If the order comes through I will send the pattern card too, so you can see what your sister did while you were away.

Love, Edith