A New Linen Face Cloth

The linen face cloth that has lived in my bathroom for years and years came from my first run of face cloths.  I had to go back through my records to try and figure out when that was.

Understand that my record keeping is not always complete.  I try to fill out a record sheet for every run of fabric on one of my floor looms.  I record the pattern, the length of the warp and in the early days I always added a sample of the yarns I used and a sample of the fabric I wove.  That all sounds great.  But what I often didn't do was include the date.  I found 6 record sheets for linen face cloths dated from summer of 2013 to summer of 2019 but there are also three more record sheets with no dates.  I think at least one of those is older than 2013, maybe all of them are.

So the linen face cloth that I just retired is at least 6 years old but possibly as old as 8 years.  I know it was the runt of the litter, so to speak.  It was the smallest face cloth, small enough that I didn't feel comfortable selling it.  And it had a treadling error that stood out like a sore thumb.

I noticed that my face cloth was getting a little thread bare.  It seemed thinner than it used to be and while it was certainly not falling apart, I thought a new one might be nice.  So I replaced it with a new one from our inventory.  Well, son of a gun!  The new face cloth is fabulous!  It has structure and texture that my old one hasn't had for a while. 

My old face cloth lived draped over my shower wall and I used it for every shower I took at home for all those years.  I think it has done yeoman's service.  Now I'll save it for more tender uses, like washing babies.