Homekeeping: August 2004 Archives

Unlike most media folk, I get a huge kick out of women's service magazines: Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, etc. ... ...And it's remarkable how much entertainment value you get from the Seven Sisters and their cousins for less than three bucks per issue. I usually skip the ubiquitous sex articles, which always strike me as depressing and futile, with that rank odor of failing marriages. But I love the lurid pieces on accident survivors and couples drowning in credit card debt and mothers dealing with leering school bus drivers. But these magazines almost never have anything to do any more with what for years was their core purpose -- keeping house -- and that's too bad, because God knows the post-"I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" generation could use help in this area. I've had it with what I've come to think of as Do-Nothing feminism, which is far more pervasive and insidious now than the much ballyhooed Do-Me Feminism. Do-Nothing feminism makes domestic incompetence a point of pride: "I just CAN'T cook/sew on a button/clean up my house...I'm just..too...BUSY!" is its neurasthetic cri du coeur, the modern equivalent of 19th-Century fainting spells.

I have a friend who's recently started doing counted cross-stitch. She's completed a couple of projects and is itching to try a new one. She's envisioning linen cocktail-sized napkins.

Anyone have the 411 on a good source for the linen for this kind of project? We went to the craft store -- the pre-made napkins were too large (and had tatty lace around the edges.) There was some ivory-colored Irish linen (32 count); I think she's looking for something with a larger count (if that's possible) and perhaps a truer white color.

Recommendations for catalogs, websites, embroidery shops in the DC Metro area, etc would be received and passed on with gratitude.

Thanks in advance!