“I’ve bought you a loom,” said Dad, fancying self-sufficiency.
Mum was planting potatoes, while his thoughts shuttled off, wondering about getting a pigpen.
Indoors, my mother, tense as warped yarn, wondered how she was could cook with this monstrous machine filling our dark kitchen. Selvedges would run parallel to cupboards while the beam abutted the range and to weave the weft she would have her back to the sink.
One day, the loom was gone.
Despite Scots blood, Mum never wove the tweed suit Dad planned. I think she made a table mat.
He’s lucky it wasn’t a shroud.
Copyright 2016 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission
Prompted by the word “Yarn” in the Thin Spiral Notebook. (NB this is a true story.)
That last line made me laugh. Poor dad, smart mom.
It’s actually really true. My dad was really that daft and used to do that sort of thing. I had forgotten it entirely until I was reminiscing with an old friend and it popped into my head. I thought I must be imagining it but I asked my mother and she said it was true. As our house was floor to ceiling clutter anyway, I can’t imagine how he got it inside. I would have been about eight at the time. My mother was the sensible one but it never rubbed off on dad!
(FYI – your back link redirects back to this post…)
I know, I realised that afterwards. I’m trying to change it
I’ve changed it!
Hooray!
Were your parents called Tom and Barbara — or is that a reference lost on you?
Ha ha! No it’s not lost on me but I imagine it would have been the sort of thing that would have inspired him. My father was not one to let a fad pass him by. He discovered health food next. But a post about food will have to be a lot longer than 100 words!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJc-woJ_nU
It reminded me of this.
PS The Good Life aired afterwards by a year or so, by which time Dad had moved onto snorkelling.
He was an innovator ahead of his time.
He was certainly eccentric!