Warshin' Up the Clothes

The knifemaker's aunt packed white t-shirts and dark pants for this month of learning. The idea was to treat work clothes as wear-and-wash items from day to day, nothing fancy or fanciful. White may not have been the best choice cleaniness-wise because [especially after today's efforts to pound metal into a shape] blacksmith work is dirty. Sweeping up the filings and grinding dust is dirty. Even tonight when showering, there was dark,  metal-colored dust in the knifemaker's aunt's ears and nose.

 There are several ideas for whitening clothes.

The white t-shirts covered by the ochre-dyed leather apron became not white under the apron where the yellow color wore off onto the  damp shirt as the knifemaker's aunt sweated. **sigh*  As a strange bit of information, did you know horse urine can brighten whites?  Yessirree, among the many ways to clean white clothes Lisa Nelsen-Woods at Condo Blues says horse urine was used in Elizabethan times to keep white clothes white but yikes!, there are no horses around the knife shop and besides, yikes! 

To get the accumulated bag of clothes clean, the knifemaker's aunt left the shop a little early to get a $1.99 jug of laundry detergent and visited the Warsh House, a laundromat in the area where local people sit and chat about town activities. The Warsh House has a sign on its door that says Open: around 8 - 8:30am, Closed: most likely before 9am. What's not to like about a place that shares information like that?  Everybody the knifemaker's aunt came in contact with was helpful, but not clinging-ly so. She put a $10 bill into the change machine and was rewarded with the cheerful ckinkclinkclink of 40 quarters dropping into the metal dispenser bowl. She then threw all the clothes into one washer with some of the $1.99 soap and viola! the clothes were clean. Even the white t-shirts came out white. An hour later, the knifemaker's aunt had folded the clothes and was walking to the car.

The washers and dryers used
in the Warsh House.

YeeHA! Tomorrow the cut nails will forged with fresh clothes!