Counting threads

I have an unhealthy love of linens -  Tablecloths especially.  I love to wander in the linen departments of major retail chains and peruse catalogs devoted to sheets. Threadcounts of over a thousand make me giddy.


My best friend, Annie, Will and Emma help
me pick tablecloths in Jaipur

 When we travel I love to check out the local linens. One of my favorite shopping sprees was in Jaipur, India where we visited countless stalls to look at the fabrics. HEAVEN.

My mother's recent move to Florida meant that she could unload a generous number of linen tablecloths from her 'collection'. Come to think of it, she has a bit of a habit, too. She came by it honestly, though! Her grandfather grew flax in Ireland (the main 'ingredient' in linens) so her family was laden with linens as well. My christening gown was made from the flax from my great-grandfather's estate in Ballymena. It's been worn by quite a few babies in my family - and even made a trip back to Scotland to be worn by another relative. So, perhaps my love of a good cloth grew from that first experience as a wee christened body. Who knows?

I always use a tablecloth on our kitchen table and change it with great regularity. I have a cabinet in the kitchen entirely devoted to the cloths. I always thought that I was one of a very few who did this. But, last night we were visiting friends at a lovely cabin near East Otto. Laurie had a great looking tablecloth on her kitchen table. I noticed at the end of the night, after we cleared the dishes, that she whipped that tablecloth off and replaced it with another equally attractive one. I AM NOT ALONE! That is exactly what I thought.

When I met Bill, he was living as a bachelor in a fairly large house. He gave me a tour and I noticed that he had a crisp looking comforter on his bed. It looked new - as opposed to the other things in his house. I snuck a look at the sheets (the comforter was turned down - so it was easy) . They were masculine (grey/red stripes) and were of a decent quality. I was impressed. Especially since he had told me that during college he didn't even use sheets - he was too lazy to do the laundry.

It wasn't til years later that he confided that he had just bought the comforter and sheets  in hopes of 'getting lucky' with me. (It took more than that!). And, he didn't even know about my obsession.