#wyrd sisters

[petermorwood]

This is excellent advice for the treatment (or apparent maltreatment, in linen's case) of natural fabrics.

Here's some additional info based on personal experience over many decades and numerous ways of doing laundry from ancient (well, early 1960s) to modern.

Wool. A splendid outer layer, since rain sits on rather than soaks in, but needs care when washing, and even more when drying. Don't wash a woollen garment on Hot, and definitely don't dry it that way. If you do, your favourite woolly pully will shrink to something for a child, and a child's woolly pully into something for a doll. I have done this, and it was not well appreciated except, way way back, by my small sister and presumably by her nattily pullovered favourite doll.

Cotton. Will indeed shrink a bit after washing and drying, but fortunately will stretch again during wear. Can be washed very hot to get rid of Those Annoying Stains, and by Very Hot I mean boiled. It'll still stretch back - eventually - and although sometimes uncomfortably snug during the stretching process, will nevertheless be nice and clean.

Silk. Usually expensive, so accordingly laundered with probably more care than it needs, since this is a fabric once used (in many layers, granted) as armour. Does Not Chafe, which is why it was worn as scarves by fighter pilots who had to keep turning their heads in case of The Hun In The Sun. "Silk hiding steel" is appropriate, because a lady with a Hermés (not "an 'ermes", you pronounce the H) silk scarf and something to weigh it with is not as unarmed as she seems.

Linen. The 600lb gorilla of the fabric world, only bettered by hemp. Can have a weave tight enough to carry water without dripping - especially after the weave soaks and swells - and a tensile strength enough to carry pounds and kilos of it. (You can still buy collapsible "canvas" - usually linen or hemp - buckets...) @dduane and I inherited a lot of Irish Linen from my Mum, some still in original boxes with original washing instructions. Those instructions were, more or less, "rub soap into stubborn stains, scrub thoroughly and boil until clean".

Where linen and hemp fabrics are concerned...

*****

Even though she had a succession of increasingly modern washing machines, Mum also had and occasionally used - or more accurately supervised my use of - some quite old-fashioned laundry equipment.

Linens with stubborn stains were indeed scrubbed thoroughly, using a block of hard soap then a washboard, and an impressive abs workout it was...

Then the scrubbed stuff was boil-washed in Mum's washing machine (which could reach a genuine 100°C rolling boil) before being rinsed, passed through the mangle (or wringer, more in this post) and pegged out on the washing-line to dry.

*****

As i hunted up illustrations I (re-)discovered a Terry Pratchett Discworld connection. Remember the "copper stick" used by Granny and Nanny to summon the demon in "Wyrd Sisters"?

"What are you going to try?" said Granny. Since they were on Nanny's territory, the choice was entirely up to her. "I always say you can't go wrong with a good Invocation," said Nanny. "Haven't done one for years." Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, "Oh, but you can't. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff." Granny and Nanny exchanged glances. "It's not her fault," said Granny. "It's all them grimmers she was bought." She turned to Magrat. "You don't need none of that," she said. "You need headology." She looked around the ancient washroom. "You just use whatever you've got," she said. She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand. "We conjure and abjure thee by means of this—" Granny hardly paused – "sharp and terrible copper stick."

It's one of these, not made OF copper but meant for use IN a copper.

Mum had one, originally Granny's, which kept getting pinched to play the role of sword, baton or whatever, though its official purpose was to stir, untangle and finally remove laundry which had been boiled in a "laundry copper":

This one shows how it straddled two gas jets, but Nanny Ogg's copper had a fireplace space under the actual cauldron (though in summer she used it as a beer cooler).

These cauldrons were still called "coppers" even when more cheaply made of iron. It's another instance of how vacuum cleaners became "hoovers" and sticking-plasters became "band-aids" etc., etc., no matter what brand they really were.

"Boil", however, wasn't a figurative term. It meant what it said, and those thoroughly scrubbed linens (cottons, too) would bubble merrily for quite a while "until clean".

Coppers were also used for cooking, with perhaps the most famous literary instance being chez Cratchit in "A Christmas Carol":

“A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding!"

Mum initially had a separate electric boiler - IIRC it was Burco brand, which still makes much smaller boilers for catering, though ours was never used for anything except laundry - but mostly I remember the boil being done in her washing machine.

More modern machines only go to 90-95°C, sometimes just 60°C, but when her Hoover was running at full belt, things got as lively as any pot on a hob even before the agitator started churning. Never mind closing its lid to avoid mess, when a boil-wash was taking place that lid was also a needful safety precaution against scalding splashes.

*****

Removal by copper stick was superseded by use of tongs, and Mum had a set just like these...

...though I don't think hers had such an apt name.

Stirring with the copper stick was replaced by washing with a posser, which pumped up and down, or a washing dolly, which rotated.

Both actions have been replicated by washing-machines, and though variants of the dolly rotation became almost standard in tub washers, the posser did appear in an early 20th-century hand-operated machine...

...as well as the Frigidaire "Jet Cone" washer...

...whose action, TBH, reminds me of certain non-laundry gadgets I saw many years ago in The Pleasure Chest on Santa Monica... :-P

Modernised possers or even original designs are still available today.

*****

Whenever you read in stories about avoiding trouble with laundresses, those devices along with scrubbing, wringing out and cranking mangles are why. Regular workouts with laundry equipment gave them the sort of muscles nobody wanted to provoke.

*****

I've already mentioned "A Christmas Carol" and, given the time of year (posted 22nd December 2024) this ought to end with another one, so...

As shepherds washed their socks by night, All seated round the tub, A bar of Sunlight soap came down And they began to scrub...

You're welcome.

:->

Here, a cheater course on caring for natural fibers!

1. Wool. Treat it like it has the delicate constitution of a Victorian lady and the conviction that baths are evil of a 17th century noble. (If I get in WATER my PORES will OPEN and I will CATCH ILL AND DIE.)

2. Cotton; easygoing. Will shrink a bit if washed and dried hot.

3. Silk; people think it’s like wool and has the constitution of a fashionably dying of consumption Victorian lady, but actually it’s quite tough. Can be washed in an ordinary washer, and either tumbled dry without heat or hung to dry.

4. Linen; it doesn’t give a shit. Beat the hell out of it. Historically was laundered by dousing it in lye and beating the shit out of it with wooden paddles, which only makes it look better. The masochist of the natural fiber world. Beat the fuck out of it linen doesn’t care. Considerably stronger than cotton. Linen sheet sets can last literal decades in more or less pristine shape because of that strength.The most likely natural fiber to own a ball gag.

[cephalopod-celabrator]

I think it's really funny that reading the discworld witch books (at least the ones that are Weatherwax+Ogg+Magrat), Granny immediately seems like the scariest one by far. She seems like a terrifying force of nature accompanied by a jovial old grandma and an insecure young woman. But as the series progress, the times when Granny holds back and Nanny and Magrat jovially engage in brutal physical violence add up. Now I'm not saying you *shouldn't* be scared of Granny, I'm just saying that she has a rather strong conscience in her way, whereas Magrat and Nanny will both sucker punch you, kick you between the legs and happily step over your groaning body. Granny is to be feared, but Nanny doesn't fight fair and Magrat will kill a motherfucker. Terry Pratchett really knew how to write female characters.

[wil4x]

Granny Weatherwax

My latest attempt at Granny, one of my favorite Discworld characters!

[melissentee]

Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn't want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being you were alive to suffer it.

wyrd sisters by Terry Pratchett

[headcanonsandmore]

@the-little-fox-in-the-box The whole thing is free on YouTube if you want to watch it. 😁

Discworld: Wyrd Sisters Director: Jean Flynn | Studio: Cosgrove Hall | UK, 1997

[fangirl-erdariel]

I'm rereading Wyrd Sisters, and fuck I had forgotten how good Terry Pratchett is at making things simultaneously hilarious and actually kinda dark and disturbing as fuck.

Like, it's been years since I last read Wyrd Sisters, and yeah I sorta remembered the running gag about the duke trying to scrub the blood off his hands with increasingly destructive method, but it had only really stuck to my mind as something to giggle at like, yeah dude I think there might be a reason your hands seem to continue being bloody if you're trying to scrub them with sandpaper, haha what a funny joke

and I mean don't get me wrong, it is still funny to me now. But at the same time there's just this layer of like, okay wait actually that's pretty fucked up, like it's funny but also holy shit dude you really went there huh, that hadn't really stuck to my memory from my previous time reading the book so it's smacking me full force in the face now

I've said it before, but genuinely, Terry is just so good at playing with the balance of silliness and darkness and leaving those implications in there that just snag your attention all of a sudden

[stellarmeals]

Discworld inktober day 22 - Esmerelda Weatherwax

Granny Weatherwax was the strongest witch in the Discworld books. When Sir Terry Pratchett found out he was dying, he needed to say goodbye to his fans. He did that through the passing of the beloved character of Granny Weatherwax in “The Shepherd’s Crown”

Even though when he was already gone when I started reading the discworld books, it was still very heartbreaking. She also kept bees as part of her specialty and after she passed, her protégé had to tell the bees. I’ve always felt like us the readers were Sir Terry’s bees.

RIP Mistress Weatherwax

[discworldquotes]

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact.

Granny Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters

[bakedbakermom]

goddammit terry 🤣

[thelonepeanutsblog]

Honestly, I couldn't tell you how many times I've read Wyrd Sisters, I got a signed copy in the 90's, yet I read this bit today and totally got the feels.

[cephalopod-celabrator]

Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax of Discworld are the iconic old lady duo of all time, for many reasons. One of those reasons being that Nanny Ogg has had sex with countless men both within and outside marriage, and is still bragging about it as an old lady. And at the same time, Granny Weatherwax is explicitly a virgin (and possibly asexual) for all of her life and is proud of it. And that was both of their choices, and neither of them regret a thing. Sure, they make snide remarks at each other about it, but they make snide remarks at each other about everything. And as an extra bonus Magrat only sleeps with one man after she marries him and that is also considered perfectly alright. That's not even going into the fact that Nanny Ogg is both maternal and horny, that Granny Weatherwax is handsome but was never pretty, and that Magrat is idealistic and femme but also filled with violent rage. I just love them so much.

[wil4x]

It's finally done! My favorite witch coven!

The wyrd sisters

Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlic!

[kojtolina]

Good Omens/Discworld cross-over because I wanted to draw ineffable wives and also I'm reading Wyrd Sisters.

Hello! I've been on a mental health/taking care of ill family members hiatus. I tried to reblog some fundraisers for a while, got scammed, went full offline, went back, checked up with the scammer in case they were legit, got ghosted. Whatever, I'm just sad the money wasn't sent to someone in need. And I'm sorry if some of you also fell victim to them because of my reblog...

Scams happen. I'm going to keep reblogging and donating. But from now on I'll stick to vetted fundraisers and el-shab-hussein is my go-to source. I'm sorry, but I won't be sharing campaigns from direct messages/asks anymore :(

I'm also planning on opening Good Omens themed commissions with 100% profit donated to families fleeing Palestine. But first I need to get everything together.

Oh and In Love's Secret Domain will be back. I promise. I just need more time.

[asparklethatisblue]

Nanny Ogg and her precious little kitty cat, Greebo. He probably just got done terrorising a wolf pack or something

[pratchettquotes]

Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn't like its expression at all.

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters