Inch by Inch

For Christmas my son gave me the diary of Howard Carter. Howard Carter is the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb. I loved the book. I loved seeing each step of the discovery through the eyes of the first man to peer into that dark hole and say, "I see wonderful things."

There was a lot of linen fabric in King Tut's tomb. There were drapes and buntings and swathings and swaddlings and items of fine clothing. But the biggest use of fabric was the mummy wrappings.

There were hundreds of yards of linen strips wrapped around the mummies. Not just the human mummy, but the dog mummies, the duck mummies, the cat mummies. Linen fabric EVERYWHERE.

And to this spinner, the big (and wonderful) realization was that every inch of every thread of those mummy wrappings was made by hand on a hand spindle.

I ought to try my hand at spinning linen. Guess what I'll be thinking about?