Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fulling Wool Cloth

Posted on by

What is fulling? Most people, even long time knitters, probably have no idea what fulling is. But it has been around for centuries.

Fulling is a process that takes knitted cloth and pounds and shrinks it into a mat that is warmer, water proof and immune to shrinking (because it has already shrunk). Think Alpine loden cloth. It’s sort of like frizzing your hair and twisting it into one giant dreadlock.

In Roman times and middle ages stale urine, a great source of ammonium salts, was used to full wool. (I kid you not!) Urine was so valuable in Roman times it was taxed. And medieval peasants made a few pennies from their urine. Fuller’s earth, (hydrous aluminum silicate), a soft clay like material, came into use sometime in the middle ages.

Once the cloth was soaked it must be pounded. Without mills, the cloth is soaped and stamped on by bare feet. The first mill, however, came into being in France during the 11th century and by the 12th century were in England as well.

In the early US, fulling parties were organized where the men stamped the soapy knitted wool into submission. Will Rees would probably have participated in a few such parties.

Fuller, Tucker, Walker are all synonyms for this process. So people with these surnames had a distant ancestor who fulled cloth.

 

First peek at “A Simple Murder”

Posted on by

By late afternoon Rees was past Rumford and heading southeast, almost to Durham and the coast. “Time to start looking for a place to stay,” he thought, eyeing dusk’s purple fingers clawing the rutted track. He’d look for a likely farm where he could camp for the night. Maybe some kind farmer would allow him space in the barn. Hollowed out by fury for most of the day (damn his sister! How could she push David, Rees’ little boy, out?) Rees was tired enough now to fall asleep in the wagon seat.

The cluster of buildings that was Durham appeared suddenly from bracelet of woods and farms. He plunged into the small village. Choose a road, any road, he thought, noting the possibilities branching off the central square. And he saw a tavern, The Cartwheel, if no generous farmers offered him the use of a barn. He turned onto the road doglegging south and soon after he spotted a white clapboard farmhouse, rising from a thin screen of trees on the western slope. A weathered red barn rose behind it, squatting on the edges of the fields wrested from the rocky soil. Rees directed Bessie onto the narrow bridge spanning the muddy creek. Perhaps anticipating fresh water and oats and the comfort of a stall, she jerked into a weary trot.

The house was a narrow clapboard, the boards weathered gray, with a small porch jutting from the front door. At the sound of hooves striking the stony drive, the farm wife stepped out from the front door and stared at Rees curiously. He pulled right up to the small porch and clumsily climbed to the ground. Driven by rage and fear, he’d pushed on without a break all day and now his body punished him for it. He staggered, awkward with stiff joints and muscles, up

the stairs towards her. A tiny woman with gray hair, she appeared younger close up. “Pardon Mistress,” Rees said, pulling off his dusty and travel stained tricorn, “I’m on my way to the Shaker community and I wonder if you might have space in your barn where I could sleep tonight.” Wiping her hands upon her apron, she glanced at the canvas-shrouded loom in the wagon bed.

“You a weaver?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m not looking for work right now though.” He paused and then, thinking she was most likely a mother, he burst out, “My son ran away from home.” Fatigue and the emotional stew of anger and fear made him more talkative usual. “My sister said he went with the Shakers.” The woman’s expression softened.

“I’ve lost family to them,” she said. “Of course…”

“What do you want here?” demanded her husband belligerently, stepping out from the house behind her. Much darker than his wife, he was black of hair and eyes.

And black of nature? Rees wondered, eyeing the other man’s scowl. Most farmers were hospitable to a traveling weaver.

Putting her pale freckled hand upon his mahogany dark tanned arm, his wife drew him inside. Rees clearly heard the work ‘Shakers’. A few moments later the farmer came back outside. “You can sleep in the barn,” he said, pointing with his chin at the red structure. “What’s your name? Mine is Henry Doucette. My wife Jane.”

“Will Rees,” Rees said, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

“Your horse looks all in,” Doucette said, casting a critical eye over Bessie. “You’re welcome to an empty stall.”
Rees nodded his thanks and climbed back into the wagon. With the day’s journey finally nearing its end, both Rees and Bessie allowed fatigue to overtake them.  Rees wasn’t sure they could make even the short trip across the yard to the barn.

Rees got Bessie settled in with fresh water and a nosebag of oats. When he returned to his wagon, he found a boy of about twelve waiting for him with a napkin covered dish and a jug of water. “My stepmother sent this up for your supper,” the boy said, thrusting the dishes into Rees’ hands. Although fair-haired, the boy was almost as darkly tanned as his father right down to his bare feet. And of an age with David, Rees thought.

“Thank her for me,” Rees said, staring down at the plate in grateful surprise. “This is very kind of her. What’s your name?”

“Oliver. She says stop by tomorrow morning and she’ll give you some breakfast,” the boy said with a flash of white teeth.

“Thank you.” With an awkward nod, the boy fled down the hill at a run.

Rees sat down on a seat of fresh straw, his back to the wagon wheel looking upon the green valley before him. The road on which he’d arrived unwound like a silvery ribbon in the last rays of sunlight. The lowing of the cattle sounded from a nearby pasture and Bessie’s contented whicker floated out from the barn. Peaceful. Dolly would approve. He sighed. Eight years since Dolly’s death in 1787, six of them spent as a traveling weaver. Two years he struggled to keep his farm going without Dolly; two solid years. But he couldn’t do it without her. And since he made more money weaving than farming he’d offered the management of his land to his sister and her husband in exchange for raising his David with their own kids. He’d thought his eight- year old son would be safe with them while he worked. Sighing, he lifted off the napkin and dug into the stew.  For five years and more he’d gone home intermittently. Not often enough; he saw that now and he’d do his best to make it up to David.

When he tried to sleep, the rage he’d tamped down during the day flared up again, hotter and fiercer than before. He could just slap his sister!  He’d begun yearning to see David again after his experiences on the western frontier during the Rebellion two years previously, and as soon as winter ended he headed north.  Several profitable weaving commissions delayed him in Massachusetts so he arrived in Maine the summer of 1795, a year later than he expected, but he rode home with a strongbox almost too heavy to lift.

Caroline greeted him with hostile surprise. “We weren’t expecting to see you until winter,” she said.  She did not at first admit that David was gone. Instead she forced him to ask several increasingly agitated questions until he realized the truth. Then, when he exclaimed in furious disbelief,

“David’s gone? How could you allow that to happen?” She and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder and defied him.

“He’s a man grown,” Sam cried angrily. “We couldn’t stop him.”

“He’s fourteen,” Rees snapped.

“There’s nothing for him here,” Charles said. Rees glared at his oldest nephew as the boy added rudely, “Let him seek his fortune elsewhere.” Neither of his parents reprimanded the lad for his unmannerly behavior.

“He couldn’t wait to leave,” Caroline said sneeringly. He knew then that David was simply an inconvenience. He pressed them again and again until they were all shouting but all they would say was that they thought David went off with the Shakers.  Rees flung out of the house he and Dolly had shared and raced towards Durham, and the Shaker settlements near it.

More wacky English idioms

Posted on by

English is a very creative language. It’s so creative the origins of some of our idioms are lost or at least difficult to trace.

‘Skeleton in the closet’ for one. Skeleton is an old word, 16th century at least, from German. It was coined in the UK in the early 1800’s. Skeleton in the closet is used in America; apparently in England it has undergone a change and is now a ‘skeleton in the cupboard’.

How about ‘air your dirty laundry’? Obviously from a time when people hung their laundry out to dry. But when? So far, haven’t found that date. This idiom is one I think of as from a woman’s experience since women have always been charged with doing the wash.

‘Baptism by fire’, another one of my mother’s favorite expressions. First mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 3:11) the OED lists its English use as beginning in 1822, as referencing a soldiers first experience in battle.

‘Pooh’, a more genteel expression than the one we use to day.  This is also from the 16th century, from the Scots, and it has taken on a variety of spellings and connotations.

As one would expect, a lot come from sports or activities related to sports. Having a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ was actually a popular method of settling quarrels in the nineteenth century. A boy would place a chip on his shoulder and dare his opponent to knock it off. Carrying a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ comes from the same thing. Really? This is how they settled quarrels?

‘Loaded for bear’, one I use all the time. From the 1880’s and was used to describe a player in a baseball game.  I would have expected it to be from hunting.

Most of the idioms seem to arise from male activities and male interests, but not all. Before it took on a perjorative connotation, spinster was a description of almost every woman; everybody but the richest woman spent significant time spinning for her family.  I commented in an earlier post about the loss of knowledge about weaving words. Coincidence? Well, a year or two ago Archaeology Magazine commented that some digs were now concentrating upon the world of women and slaves. I’ll just bet their view of the world was different from the men!

Our English language – new and old idioms

Posted on by

English as a language has been around for centuries. We still enjoy Shakespeare’s plays and they’re from the mid-1500s. So it should be easy to write about 1796; we’re all speaking the same language, right?

Well, yes and no. English is a living language and as such keeps changing. Think about all the new terms that have arrived on the heels of the computer revolution. And there are changes in speech patterns too. My mother frequently decried the increasing informality of conversation and the use of nouns as verbs. Just think of ‘texting’ from text. Or “I must netflix that movie.”

Medical terms like ‘mastitis’, an inflammation in the breast, wasn’t used until the mid 1800’s.  And Rex, as a name for a dog. wasn’t used before about 1820. A writer, therefore, has to be careful not to add too many anachronisms to the manuscript. Sometimes, thought, it is necessary just for the sake of clarity.

What I think is surprising is the longevity of some of the idioms we still use. ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ is one common expression. No, it doesn’t mean your mother is going to whip out the iron. It is a blacksmithing expression. Iron was shaped while it was hot and pliable by pounding upon it. If you wanted to create something like a sword from an iron rod, it would need to be heated and pounded, over and over.

How about ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ ? This one is very old. It’s been traced back to Chaucer, although the sentence structure was different and of course the spelling to a modern eye is crazy: sleepyng at least is quickly apparent. By the late eighteen hundreds both spelling and structure were the same as they are now. That’s why we can still easily read a writer like Dickens. Another old term is ‘cracker’, a derogatory term used for southern whites by the British by the 1760’s. What is the origin? Still working on that.

Then there is ‘spinning in his grave?” So evocative. But it is relatively new. The first use I can find is ‘turn in his grave’, by Thackeray in 1848.

The term ‘ne’er do well’ just turned up in a lyric by the band Incubus. It is of course a contraction of ‘never do well’. According to a blog post from the UK, Ne’er has been used in that shortened form since the 13th century, notably in the North of England and in Scotland. ‘Ne’er do well’ itself originated in Scotland and an early citation of it in print is found in the Scottish poet and playwright Allan Ramsay’s A collection of Scots proverbs, 1737.

How about mind your Ps and Qs, one of my mother’s favorite expressions. No one seems to know the origin of this one so I will list a few possibilities:

1. Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practice of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks.

2. Advice to printers’ apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs, or the same advice to children who were learning to write.

3. Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them.

4. Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. It seems doubtful this began as a French expression.

5.  Another version of the ‘advice to children’ origin has it that ‘Ps and Qs’ derives from ‘mind your pleases and thank-yous”. OK, this sounds somewhat plausible.

So no one really knows where this one comes from but it is old enough to have been used in 1795.

Other terms I’m still working on: ‘she rules the roost.” That sounds agricultural and therefore old. How about ‘tar with the same brush.” That sounds like it comes fromt he days of tarring and feathering but I don’t know for sure. Another one I am curious about is ‘heads will roll’. From the days of the French Revolution perhaps. Stay tuned and when I find the origins I will report.

Dyes and Dyeing in Peru

Posted on by

The cochineal beetle is a native of Peru. When one visits the Highlands, all the prickly pear cacti are covered with a grayish bloom. That gray, that looks like fungus, is actually colonies of these beetles.

Crushing a beetle results in a deep red color, the insect’s blood, and this blood when mordanted creates a beautiful and intense red. Think the Pope’s robes. Until the invention of the aniline dyes, this color was the standard for red. (Madder was also used but the color was not always as intense.) The Spanish kept a tight grip on this dye for several centuries.

But the Peruvian Highlands are home to many other wonderful natural dyes as well.

Although green was difficult to obtain in Europe and Early America, the Peruvians used the leaves of a plant called Chilka (Baccharis caespitosa (family: Asteraceae).

Kiko flowers result in yellow and nogal (or walnut) in dark brown or black.

One natural dye they did not grow themselves was indigo, for the bright blues. Indigo was available but it was expensive.

Other plants surrendered their roots, leaves, berries and fruits to make dyes. One lichen, called Qaqasunkha (family Usneaceae) comes with a caution. Although natural dyes tend to be less toxic (but not always) and better for the environment, gathering large amounts of lichen could actually be detrimental to the environment. So here is another example of the dangers of making a general statement about using only natural dyes.

Communes – and the Shakers

Posted on by

The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

Communes – and the Shakers

Posted on by

The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

To dye for – Red

Posted on by

Madder (rubia tinctorum) has been used for centuries as a red dye. It is well known as the dye for Turkey Red or, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the red coats for the British during the eighteenth century. Wild madder yields a subtler pinky brown. Unlike many natural dyes, madder contains natural mordanting agents and does not need to be mixed with iron or tin or other materials.

When Spain entered the New World, another source of red dye became available to Europe; cochineal. ((Cochineal was already known to and used by the Aztecs and the Maya people as well as the Incas and pre-Incas in Peru.) Insects similar to small beetles live on the cactus found at the higher altitudes in countries such as Peru. A visitor to Peru will see this grayish bloom on the cacti growing wild in the Sacred Valley. It looks like some form of fungi but is actually an insect colony. Cochineal is  the blood of the female of this species and dyes vibrant red, pink and purple. I have read that the Pope’s robes were dyed with cochineal. Without a proper mordant, cochineal is not colorfast.

Spain held a monopoly on cochineal for years, making the bright scarlet very much sought after and very expensive. It was the color of the rich and paintings from this era contain frequent splashes of red clothing, wherein the subjects demonstrate their wealth and high status. Similar to the use of Tyrian purple in earlier times. This dye was discovered in antiquity and traded by the Phoenicians. It is made from the shells of the common Mediterrean Sea Snail. It was both rare and expensive (the Phoenicians held on to their monopoly for years) and became the color of royalty. It has never been produced synthetically commercially. Efforts to transport the insects to Europe failed. They were transported successfully to Australia where they caused a whole new raft of problems.

Cochineal is still used as a dye and appears in both candy and lipstick. Think of that every time you put something red on or in your mouth.

To Dye For – The problem with green and Napoleon’s death

Posted on by

Green is just about the most common color in nature so finding a great green dye should be easy, right? Well, despite the fact that green leaves and plants are all around us, a beautiful green is hard to find.

Many plants yield a light celery green or yellow green with the proper mordant. (A mordant makes the dye stick to the fabric. Otherwise the dye would wash right out.) Lily of the Valley and hydrangea both give a celery green dye. But Lily of the valley is highly poisoness; roots, leaves and flowers. Queen Anne’s lace gives a pale green and foxglove an apple green. The colors are not the vibrant shades we expect. In Peru the women use leaves that they gather in the forest from the chilla (spelling?) plant. When mordanted with copper carbonate it produces a sage green, sometimes light and sometimes dark.

A word about mordants. Iron, copper, alum, lye, tin, mercury urine; just about every substnace imaginable has been used as a mordant. In the middle ages the men who dyed hats used mercury, a very poisoness heavy metal. The Mad Hatter from “Alice in Wonderland” wasn’t just a creation of Carroll’s imagination.

The other problem with natural dyes is consistency. It is difficult to use plants and achieve the same result time after time. Dyers quickly learned to cultivate dye plants as an aid to controlling the brightness of the colors. Even then, dye plants dyed in a wide range of hues. Madder, which dyed the British red coats red, dyes bright red unless it dyes pink. It is very difficult to achieve the same color over and over.

Which brings us to green. A bright emerald green was not developed until 1778. It was created by a Swedish chemist named Karl Scheele and contained arsenic. Green was a popular color for wallpaper then. (George Washington himself took time from his busy political life to plan two green rooms at Mount Vernon.) Many many people fell ill. The cause was frequently misdiagnosed since the symptoms were general and came on gradually. One theory is that arsenic may have been made into a gas by the mold living in the wallpaper paste in damp rooms. (Mmm, this sounds safe.) This dye was even used for candy for children. In 1875 the ‘Lancet’, a British medical journal, spearheaded a campaign to abolish the arsenic greens. By then the aniline dyes were being created from coal tars. These dyes created vibrant colors that were much more colorfast.

So what does this have to do with Napoleon? When imprisoned on the island of Elba, he spent much of his time in a room with the fashionable green wallpaper. When his hair was tested in modern times, it revealed a high level of arsenic. At first, it was theorized he’d been poisoned.  A more recent competing theory suggested he’d been poisoned all right, by the arsenic in his wallpaper.

Natural is not always safer and while I wouldn’t use cooking utensils for my dyestuffs at least I am assured that none of them contain arsenic.

To Dye for – Indigo

Posted on by

Indigo is probably the most familiar dye in the world and has a long history of use. It is thought that India was the first place indigo dyeing began use of the dye quickly spread. From the Tuaregs in the Sahara to Cameroon, clothing dyed with indigo signified wealth.

In the United States, of course, indigo gave the characteristic blue to denim (although most of the dye now used is synthetic.) Woad also yields a blue dye (yes, the same woad used by the Celts) but it is not usually as deep a blue.  Asian indigo, Indigofera sumitrana, yields true indigo.

Indigo is not water soluable and so has to be treated to make it useable. One of the pre-industrial processes  was  soaking it in stale urine. Many accounts do not mention this particular fact but the pungency of the process is regularly described. The result is known as indigo white. Fabric dyed in the indigo white turns blue with oxidation. Indigo is also toxic so there is plenty of opportunity for indigo workers t become sick. And despite the processing, indigo fades slowly over time.

I saw items dyes with indigo in the highlands of Peru. The hanks of wool were all different colors from a light royal blue to such a deep blue it was almost navy.

During the Colonial period, there were indigo plantations in South Carolina. Three harvests, the last in early December, was the goal and contemporary accounts describe both the pungency of the smell and the toll the harvests took upon the slaves. Indigo was synthesized in the late 1890’s and within twenty years or so had almost completely replaced the natural substance.