Mysteries

Today was cleaning day. Any day is "cleaning day" if I see something that needs done and I can do it. A while back I grabbed the Swiffer and dusted all the chair rungs. It was a mental throwback to an early job when I was at the bosses' home, having "tea" with his wife and some others. We were sitting on the floor, around a lovely low table. Suddenly she looked under the table, took her napkin and began dusting the table legs and rugs. "A place the cleaning lady never looks," she said.

Such I always thought about the cleaning staff, and what the hell. They have a lot of rooms, and people with differing habits and wants, and then the whole huge building. I can dust my chair rungs every so often. And Diana was just leaving my bedroom when I grabbed my Swiffer to clean the chair rungs. She asked what I was up to, and I told her. I blamed it on the construction dust from outside.

"Not so," she said. "It's all from your humidifier."

You probably cannot see, but against the lamp standard rising in the back is a faint cloud of steam from my little humidifier. It is a cold air unit, or as my father used to say, it flash fries water and spits it out. I bought it the winter before last, and it ended my bloody noses at once. But according to Diana, it is responsible for this:

All the white, powdery stuff that settles on everything in the apartment. I don't know. I'll keep running my humidifier and dusting the furniture rungs.

I've also emptied my loom and am ready to embark on a new project. I think it will be towels. But I need a new treadling. The Shaker towel I've woven for years is a little workhorse of weaves, dense but not heavy. It sops up water.

There are other interesting weaves that I'm sure would work. One is a pattern I first found in a Dover reprint of an nineteenth century weavers manual. I wish I could remember its name. It was a list and description of what a journeyman weaver should be able to produce. Sort of the thing Benjamin Franklin might have set and printed in his brother's shop.

The pattern is a variation of herringbone twill and was called Irish Fancy. I threaded it up more for the name than the pattern, but it turned into a staple of our weaving studio. We wove all the fabrics for our heavier garments in the twill. One popular garment was an over shirt with a Henly throat, a thick, soft cotton in that twill.

My daughter and her boyfriend way back then each had one. After a camping trip Rich told me the shirt was incredible. Dried him off after a swim and he sleep in it at night. All around versatile. I bet it will dry dishes well, too. 

The other possibility is Rosepath. It's another twill weave, but one I've never tried. In my opinion, it needs to be expanded as an overshot weave, and that is very time consuming. But I found a Rosepath treading that expands the little flowers with a bit of plain weave between the rows of flowers. Interesting.

So, I'll thread up each and see which I'll choose. Then I'll have to order more thread, fix my web site again, etcetcetc. Several price increases of thread later, I'll have to recalculate cost. I wonder if I'll be shocked.