My Tea-towel Conundrum
I was told by a friend with a verifiable vintage hankie addiction that I have a tea-towel addiction. She’s not wrong. I point this out about her just because.
I have piles of tea-towels new and old. Piles! I use them all day every day, I am rarely without one over my shoulder, can my friend say the same of her hankies? Probably not unless she gets the sniffles. A lot.
My problem, the conundrum is, that I love a tea-towel best when it’s torn and tattered with age and from use. The more forlorn it looks the better I like it. I have 20+ years old towels that are just now becoming soft enough for me to even like them. The hard truth is that once a tea towel is soft enough and perfect enough for me it has more holes than fabric and disintegrates away to nothing.
This towel is not quite there yet. It’s 18 years old-ish. I’ll keep working on it.
I think there is a lesson of some sort in this hole (😂) crazy deal but I’m not sure if it’s “see the beauty even in the decay” or “still use it even when no one else will” or “frayed but still works” or “rags get a bad rap” or? Okay. Maybe there is no lesson. But there should be. 
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4 Comments
Marianne Guarena
hehe That’s cute! I have a teatowel addiction in a way, I have brand new ones I think are cute that I will never use (they are just too perfect but I bought them to wrap bread in when I serve it). I have one with roosters on it that is like 9 years old, super-stained. I do have an affinity for vintage hankies, though. I will have to post a pic of one is so delicately intricate and beautiful that I would never use it. It sits in its tissue paper box, unused. Bought it for about $2 at an antique store. Some I have purchased in other countries (Switzerland for instance) handmade. Some are not vintage but have my monogram (in pink) on them and I do carry them. I like to think I am preserving a time when ladies were ladies.
EdgehillHerbFarm
I look forward to seeing your hankie! You are preserving a gentler time! Well done!
Marianne Guarena
Thank you! Yes, a gentler time. I like that. I once only used hankies for when I was “dressed up” (Opera, ballet, parties) but then I stopped doing those things UNFORTUNATELY. I actually have a monogrammed modern one in my dirtbike backpack, haha. It is absurd but tissues fall apart, right?
EdgehillHerbFarm
Right!!! I use hankies all the time myself because tissues make my nose raw. I just don’t have as many hankies as I have tea towels…