Chapter 44: Everything You Need Is Available Through Your Own Efforts (Added)...

This tabby cat's favorite breed is calico cats.

The cat-loving woman said, "Don't be fooled by all the cats in this picture; it only likes calico."

"Do you think I discovered it this way? Damn it, it would bring me dead rats every day and put them on that table like tribute. It scared me half to death one night."

“I throw one to it and it brings it back one by one, and then I put it in front of the calico cat at the very bottom.”

As the cat-loving woman spoke, a smug smile suddenly appeared on her round face, much like a cat's cunning. "When I saw it, it got really into it. When it caught mice in my house, it didn't dare leave a single hair behind, for fear that it would sniff them out."

"Later, whenever a household had a rat infestation, I would charge three coins and take it there to exterminate the rats. It was really impressive; you couldn't find a single rat in the entire alley."

Others tremble at the mere mention of its name, but when it comes to this tabby cat, even mice tremble at the mere mention of its name.

After the cat-loving woman finished speaking, she took out a bag of copper coins from the basket. It was heavy. She said in a low but proud voice, "Here, this is the 213 coins it earned by catching mice. There is also a bag of salt and sesame seeds for hiring a cat. If it works out, please give it to my cat, Hua Hua Hua, as a companion."

Upon hearing the name, Lin Xiushui paused. Whose cat is named Hua Hua Hua, a skilled mouser? No wonder she likes calico. What a coincidence.

Saying it was for making eye masks was a joke, but Lin Xiushui was genuinely puzzled, "Why not find it a real cat to keep it company?"

What is fake can never become real.

"It has a lot of problems. It can't eat raw fish. If it does, it will feel uncomfortable. When it feels uncomfortable, it will just lie there without making a sound. When it is in heat, it will dig holes everywhere, trying to bury itself."

"Its biggest problem is that it is afraid of cats."

The cat-loving woman stroked the cat huddled in the basket. This tabby cat was very sturdy, with shiny fur and a round head, but it was quite large. It was timid around other cats but fiercely protective around mice.

She smiled and said, "I found it under the eaves. Back then, it was always bullied by other cats in the alley. It would pretend to hide in front of my pillar, acting like a guard cat with an owner."

"The other cats went home and had catfish to eat, but it drank the water from the ditch and caught mice to eat."

"After I got it, it only played at home. When it saw other cats on the eaves, it would hide back in its bed and wouldn't even dare to wag its tail." "I will never get another cat."

The cat-loving woman kept stroking the tabby cat in the basket, which was padded with clothes. She always remembered that time when a small, thin cat hid by the threshold of her house. At the slightest sound, its ears would perk up and it would dart away quickly. When she gently closed the door and looked through the crack, the cat would tiptoe back, its tail raised, guarding the door.

He's already a big, chubby baby now, and quite heavy.

The cat-loving woman said to Lin Xiushui, "The fortune teller said that I would have a son and a daughter in this life. I lived to be forty years old and only had one daughter. This cat is my son, so it can be considered as fulfilling the prophecy."

She pushed the money bag on the table toward Lin Xiushui, first saying that if it wasn't enough, she could add more, and then said, "I want to help it hire a cat companion from you."

It sounded a bit ridiculous, but Lin Xiushui glanced at the cat in the basket and nodded, saying, "I'll make a cat for Huahuahua that will stay with it forever."

A cat's life may be long or short, lively or quiet. Some cats, like Xiao Ye, live in groups. When Xiao He gets up, eats her cat food, and lets her out, a row of cats will sit on the eaves, biting the cloth mouse that Lin Xiushui made, jumping up and down.

There are also cats like Huahuahua who used to live on their own, hiding and running away, but after becoming house cats, they no longer dare to face their own kind.

Lin Xiushui took on the job of hiring a cat. In her memory, a cat made of felt wool was almost identical to a real cat.

As for the wool, she bought some from the Cuju club. They had recently been making Cuju balls from sheepskin, and there was a lot of wool from the shearing. She used it and carefully selected the wool. She still planned to fill the body with cloth and silk floss, and the tail with wool.

The silk floss was brought back by Wang Yuelan. She said that when she was pulling the silk floss, Lin Xiushui was sitting in the courtyard, looking at a calico cat painting that she had commissioned. The cat had a white belly, a tuft of black fur on its forehead, orange-yellow fur on both sides of its eyes, and yellow, black, and white fur on its back.

Upon hearing this, she put away the drawing and hurriedly said, "Auntie, please thin it out a bit. I want to dye the silk floss and wool."

Wang Yuelan paused in her hand, which was pulling the silk floss. Upon hearing this, she walked out of the house to the threshold and said, "What trick are you going to play now? If you want the silk floss to be dyed, go buy some silkworm silk. Or I can make you some cotton thread and you can take it to dye."

Actually, there is no dyeing of silk floss on the market, especially in silk-producing towns like Sangqing Town, where mulberry and silkworms are the most valued. Most dye shops only dye silk and white cloth, and even over-dyeing is rare.

Previously, dyes were expensive, and Lin Xiushui didn't have the money to buy them. Many times, she would only think about it in her mind and talk about it, but when she actually went to buy them, the price of several hundred coins for the dyes made her turn around and run away.

But now that she had just received her monthly salary, her wallet was bulging, and she didn't feel so bad about buying a piece of cloth. She could finally start experimenting with dyes, and compared to cloth, silk floss and wool were easier for her to dye.

Besides dyeing silk pouches, she also plans to dye burlap sacks in various colors, and she'll see how well the colors hold their color later.

Even if Wang Yuelan didn't understand what Lin Xiushui was up to, she knew that she had worked in the dye shop before, and even though she only dyed blue cloth, she could manage to dye other colors.

However, she defended her two pots, which were fine for cooking porridge and rice, but she also found a stove and a few earthenware pots for Lin Xiushui.

Lin Xiushui bought the dye herself. Currently, the plants used to dye yellow are sedge, gardenia, and sophora japonica. The yellow dye produced by these plants is not authentic enough, so they sell in large quantities and can be bought for dyeing.

The gardenia dye has a bright color, but its colorfastness is average; it will fade when exposed to sunlight. The locust flower buds are from last year and are sold as locust flower cakes wrapped in oil paper. Adding alum gives them a straw-yellow color.

Lin Xiushui used a stick to stir the wool and silk floss around the small stove. As she watched the color gradually turn yellow, she felt that dyeing burlap sacks was a job best left to the dyeing shop. Dyeing was quite laborious, and it wasn't worthwhile for her as a tailor. She could use that time to mend more of the things she had on hand.

"Come on, let me dye it for you. You go and get your things fixed," Wang Yuelan said, rolling up her sleeves as she walked over. "I asked you to take on this job. I'll dye the persimmon lacquer a little more brownish-black."

Lin Xiushui handed her the jar containing persimmon lacquer, smiling and saying thank you, Aunt. Xiaohe chimed in, "You're welcome, don't worry, remember to pay."

"Come here, I'll give you the money."

“I’m not coming,” Xiaohe said, peeking out from behind the pillar. “What Xiaoye said just now was not me.”

Cat Xiaoye was eating shrimp when she raised her head and meowed twice: "Meow??"

Lin Xiushui watches cats, carrying a huge pot on her back.

Next, she first used the matted silk floss as a base, covered it with two or three pieces of thick cloth, took out the washed wool and tied it again and again, but it couldn't be tied up. As the saying goes, "a trade is like a mountain," and "a trade is like a lot of wool." Finally, she found that it was a problem with the needle. There had to be needle pricks on it, and she had to grind a few holes. She used old needles to do it.

After trying for a long time, she managed to create a fairly accurate cat head, with pointed ears and a round head. The eyes were made by cutting and inlaying black wooden beads in half, making it look like a cat, but not like a real cat, unless it was carved piece by piece from wood. The body was filled with silk floss, and the fur was made from dyed silk floss, cut into pieces, sewn on, and then filled with wool to fill the gaps at the edges.

She worked on this cat for five or six days, during which many problems arose. She wasn't cut out for this kind of work, but she gritted her teeth and managed to make a fake cat, waiting for her cat-loving wife to come and hire it with her beautiful cat, Hua Hua Hua.

Hua Hua Hua really liked this cat. She slowly reached out her paw, then circled around it, wagging her tail, sniffing it again and again, and meowed happily. It didn't smell like a cat.

It only likes cats that don't smell like cats, and it likes them no matter how fake they are, which is very kind of Lin Xiushui.

The cat-loving woman was somewhat surprised. She squatted down to look at the fake cat, touched it, and took out a bag of salt and sesame seeds from her basket, intending to hire the fake cat to take home.

She thanked Lin Xiushui first, and then said to Hua Huahua, "Let's go, take your cat companion, the three of us will go home together."

As for this fake cat, it should be said that it was Hua Hua Hua's cat companion. Lin Xiushui changed its fur color again and again and patched it up, but it still stayed by Hua Hua Hua's side and snuggled together.

Lin Xiushui, on the other hand, could not forget the cat she had made, and how painful it was to prick her hand, but it was worth it.

What's even more noteworthy is that during her time as a cat, she actually bought food bags and went to a dye shop, spending about eight or nine hundred coins to dye them in many colors.

She disassembled the burlap sack; the dyed fabric had various color variations and was uneven, but it was much cheaper than dyed fabric on the market. Others would sell large pieces of fabric for tens of coins, but she sold them for ten coins each.

First, they were sold to charcoal merchants. Don't be fooled by the women who work there, who always look so grimy and miserable. They actually love pretty colors too.

Although it was her first time doing cloth scraps business with these women, they were delighted. They tore off the cloth coverings, their smiles revealing their teeth, and took off their gloves to show their clean hands. Several of the women invited Lin Xiushui to their lodgings.

They lived in a narrow alley, in a shack with thin wooden or bamboo walls on both sides. There were no windows, and they could hear even the slightest scraping sounds from the neighboring houses. The walls and ground outside were black with traces of charcoal ash, and even the trees outside were black.

Lin Xiushui once passed by this place while selling gloves and thought that the interior of such a low shed should be gray and black, like charcoal ash, perhaps with years of grime left by charcoal traces, or perhaps with a black curtain hanging on the door, with only the clothes being a different color.

But when she entered the first woman's house, she immediately felt ashamed and blushed, because the woman's house was completely different from what she had imagined.

The walls and the roof were covered with sheets of paper in various colors, many with ink marks, to prevent dust from drifting in.

"These papers," Li Qiniangzi explained to Lin Xiushui, thinking she was curious, "we bought them from the academy in front. They're paper used by the students. They're very cheap, only twenty coins for a basket of waste paper. We bought them to wallpaper the walls."

"We really like your scraps of cloth. We can make a lot of things with them, and they're cheap too. Look, this is a curtain I made myself from scraps of cloth. I wonder if it would turn out well in the hands of your tailors?"

"Of course that works."

Li Qiniangzi showed Lin Xiushui the curtain hanging in her passageway, which was made of many small scraps of cloth, in various colors, and sewn together with very rough stitches.

There was also a table, and the tablecloth on it was pieced together from scraps of cloth. Li San Niangzi also asked Lin Xiushui to look at the bed she slept on. Her husband was gone, and she had two children, so the three of them slept on two beds.

These small couches are made of bamboo and wood, but they are all covered with scraps of cloth curtains, the stitching of which is average, showing that they have been washed frequently.

“We just buy scraps of cloth to sew. Many people say that we work in the charcoal industry and are dirty anyway, so we just make do with whatever we can.”

"How can I fool myself for the rest of my life?"

Li Qiniangzi shook the gloves on her hands and said, "Ever since I started wearing these gloves, after a day of charcoal gathering, my fingers are much cleaner, except for a few white hairs on them when I take them off."

"We won't have to wash our hands repeatedly after work every day before we can sit down and mend our clothes."

When the other women came over, Lin Xiushui heard them say that these dozen or so people had formed a society called the Charcoal Sewing Society, which specialized in buying scraps of cloth and sewing them into various patterns.

They had pillowcases, purses, cloth wrappings, hairbands, door curtains, and undergarments, etc. Especially with larger scraps of cloth like Lin Xiushui's, they could piece together large items of household property such as bed sheets and quilts.

Lin Xiushui looked around at each house, where scraps of cloth of different colors, patterns, and designs were being used by the ladies to decorate the rooms.

Outside, there were mountains of black charcoal, a scene of utter darkness, but inside, life was a tapestry of vibrant colors, patched together.

Besides selling them scraps of fabric, Lin Xiushui also taught them some tricks, such as how to pad, mend, and sew. For example, if you want your shoes to stay clean, you can make shoe covers to cover them up. If you want them to look nice, you can cut out patterns from the fabric and patch them with pre-cut pieces of fabric.

She stayed in the charcoal shop for a long time, teaching them how to sew the simplest small items, how to make aprons, sleeves, and so on.

When they came out, all the fabric scraps were sold out. Those cheap and rough fabrics would be used to decorate their homes through their hands and their needlework.

Lin Xiushui continued her life as usual, working at a collar-making shop and doing sewing and mending at a small stall. She often learned a lot from those all sorts of people.

Regarding those who climb upwards and see the light, and regarding those who descend downwards and take root.

In her work selling scraps of cloth and doing all sorts of sewing, she said many people were like the mulberry trees that are everywhere in Sangqing Town—down-to-earth and rooted.

In just two months, she also rose to prominence and saw the light of day.

For example, the collar band she made.

At the collar, each collar needs to be placed on the garment, such as the cuffs, collar edge, side seams, and hem. The collar is the place where a garment is meant to be. Besides the pattern and color, the collar is also important in determining whether a garment is outstanding.

Compared to the long strips sewn from plain-colored fabric, the collar here is exquisitely crafted. It takes five days to produce the collar of a complete garment, and the collar and the seam where the jacket is made are in the front and back sections.

So when the five days arrived, the tailors who made collars and blouses gathered in a large room, like a separate meal system. There were tables and chairs, with the tailors who made blouses sitting on the left and the tailors who made collars sitting on the right.

There is a very wide and long clothes rack in the middle, also called a clothes hanger. The horizontal stretcher on top can be removed, and the clothes can be hung up through the jacket, so that people can see the shape and pattern of the jacket as quickly as possible.

As usual, Manager Yao, who manages the clothing, said, "I won't say much about the workmanship. We are all tailors, and each of us has our own outstanding needlework skills. What I want to say is that the fashion trend changes every year."

“In the past two years, the narrower the sleeves, the better. But now, they’ve become wider. The jackets need to be decorated with gold ornaments, and the patterns are changing every year.”

"When making jackets, you should always think about what else you can do to stand out besides the style. Others do a good job with the gold-sprinkled pattern. We gold-making craftsmen can also try making gold leaf..." Manager Yao was good at everything, but when it came to clothes, he had a whole lot to say.

Lin Xiushui got up at dawn, feeling really sleepy. Yao Niangzi's words were rambling and as boring as the porridge she was drinking.

She struggled to keep her eyelids open, her hands resting on the table. Her head began to feel heavy. Someone nudged her, and she instinctively sat up straight. She heard Madam Yao call out, "Ah Qiao, bring your collar up."

Lin Xiushui was startled; the word almost flew out of her mouth, but she quickly swallowed it, grabbed her collar, and stepped forward.

The twenty-three people stared at her intently, while whispers rippled through the crowd: "Drawstring embroidery, ever heard of it?"

"Don't underestimate me. I've even seen it myself, and it's about the same as my embroidery."

One person said, "I went home and smoked some too."

Another person replied, "Did the person who pulled the cloth confess?"

They whispered among themselves as Lin Xiushui's collar was hung on her jacket, eventually turning larger. Originally, Lin Xiushui used the simplest weaving method for this drawn thread embroidery, just enough to create openwork patterns.

However, to do it properly, it requires not only drawing and wrapping the yarn, but also embroidery, supplemented by intricate patterns.

She wore a long collar that was four fingers wide. She pulled out every other horizontal thread and embroidered with blue and green in the loose stitches, using openwork patterns to create intertwined green leaves and white lilies of the valley.

When worn over this extremely simple blue-green jacket without any patterns, it makes the jacket elegant and outstanding, with just the right amount of openwork and intricate yet not dense stitches.

A good collar should complement the clothes, not the other way around.

There was a gasp from below. Manager Yao stood behind the jacket and said, "Look, even at such a young age, you have such good skills. I don't need to say more about how outstanding you are. Everyone who wants to see it, come and see."

Everyone stood up and swarmed over to look. One woman whispered, "It's infuriating."

"What are you angry about?"

"It's infuriating! I'm so angry that I wasn't born with hands like these."

Then the woman coughed and said expectantly, "If you can make one for me, I'll do anything."

"Are you being told to eat vegetarian food?"

"I can eat vegetarian for a month! No, I can eat even more!" said the woman who loves meat.

I'd rather go without meat than go without a collar.

The drawn thread embroidery collar bands were not only very popular among tailors, but before any tailoring was completed, the entire set was snapped up. In addition to the long collar band at the neckline, there were two more on the cuffs and two more on the hem, for a total of four collar bands.

Lin Xiushui earned 920 coins from these four sources alone. It was the first time she had ever made money so quickly. She didn't show any change in expression, but in her heart she thought, "It's so easy to make money from rich people."

The silver coins that Madam Gu weighed out for her, with a little extra, amounted to a little over one tael. In order to keep her in check, she always split the money in cash for every transaction, never letting it drag on overnight. After all, the drawn thread embroidery collar was especially sought after, and it would make her look good in front of many young ladies.

"It's like this," Madam Gu poured her tea, "Ah Qiao, I know several young ladies who all want a necktie with drawn thread embroidery, but..."

“Everyone wants their own to be different from others, right?” Lin Xiushui understood Gu Niangzi’s unspoken meaning.

She laboriously pulled a self-made silk embroidery book from her cloth bag. It was full of drawn thread embroidery, quite short, but with varied styles, colors, and patterns.

"Let them choose. There are more if they're not enough."

Having done many mending jobs, Lin Xiushui no longer fights unprepared battles.

Not only did she make a drawing book, she also made a color matching book using scraps of fabric. She spent a long time writing down some of the colors that looked nice and then used the scraps to create matching patterns.

Light green, red interspersed with green and orange, orange, blue and white, purple and yellow, etc.

Not only that, in order to deal with all kinds of people and non-people, she also made three or four thick booklets of paper patterns to ensure that people had clothes to wear and that non-people also had clothes to wear.

Madam Gu flipped through the silk scrolls; every single one of the drawnwork embroidery designs was exquisite and outstanding. Then she glanced at Lin Xiushui and thought that she really deserved to earn some of the money.

In Gu Niangzi's mind, Lin Xiushui had gone from being a skilled ironer to having amazing sewing skills, and then to being a formidable person, so formidable that her young age could not be underestimated.

She flipped through the silk scroll, thought for a while, and then said, "Ah Qiao, the cloth scraps will still be given to you as usual, one bolt of cloth per month, I will upgrade it to two bolts of fine silk, one bolt of gauze, two sets of spring clothes, and a holiday gift, and you will have four days off per month."

The festivals mentioned here are calculated according to the days the imperial court grants officials for rest and leave, which are from New Year's Day to the twelfth lunar month, including Lantern Festival, Beginning of Spring, Renri (Human Day), Zhonghe Festival, Spring Equinox, Spring Festival, Shangsi Festival, Qingming Festival, Beginning of Summer, Dragon Boat Festival, and so on.

Lin Xiushui remained calm despite the unexpected turn of events, but was actually quite surprised. Madam Gu had given her gifts for the Shangsi Festival, Hanshi Festival, and Qingming Festival, so much so that her small boat couldn't hold them all; the bow and stern of the boat were crammed full of things.

They had to call Wang Yuelan and Xiaohe to come and get it after dark. Xiaohe was mainly responsible for carrying the lantern, while Wang Yuelan and Lin Xiushui carried the rest.

Wang Yuelan, carrying a sack of rice on her shoulder, said, "Did you save your wife's life?"

"She saved my life."

Lin Xiushui was panting heavily from carrying all the gifts. Madam Gu was very generous, giving her three bags of rice, two bags of flour, a bag of various beans, as well as cooking oil and a jar of wine, along with various pastries and fruits in red envelopes—candied fruits such as mint honey, sweet dew cakes, sugar threads, and Zezhou maltose. Lin Xiushui carefully removed the wrappings, put them in a booklet, and then took them to Sizhen.

In addition to the required scraps of cloth, she also received a copper iron, a pair of scissors engraved with the words "Bingzhou" (the best Bingzhou scissors available at the time), a box of fine needles from Liu's Kung Fu Needle Shop, and various colored silk threads.

Lin Xiushui sat amidst the pile of things, touching the iron that was about to be rolled up. The candlelight cast flickering light on her face, and she could hear the joyful voices of Wang Yuelan and Xiao He in her ears.

This is what it means to rely on yourself and have everything you need.

She stuffed the loose change she had earned into Wang Yuelan's hands and said, "Aunt, let's renovate and refurbish the house too."

Lin Xiushui, of course, also has the troubles of a seamstress. For example, she is very enthusiastic about repairing things for others, but when she gets to her own place, she will want to make do with what she has.

But after spending some time in the charcoal shop, she felt that life could be mended, but it couldn't be made too haphazardly.

When she earned enough to make ends meet, and then improved her clothes and headdresses so that she could live a decent life both inside and out, and had some money left over, Lin Xiushui naturally wanted to make her family live even better.

Wang Yuelan didn't want her to pay, as she had her own money. Lin Xiushui smiled at her, "Then I'll just invite them over, and while they're at it, I'll tear down the door too."

"Why take the door apart!" Wang Yuelan firmly disagreed. "Do whatever you want with the rest."

This is about compromise and moderation. Lin Xiushui understood: when you want to demolish a house, demolish the door first.

But since the door couldn't be dismantled, the house could be dismantled, though there wasn't a major demolition or a minor one.

For example, in the courtyard, we asked a tile repairman to remove some tiles to enlarge the courtyard and make it more noticeable. The courtyard was small and had a lot of moss after the rain, so we paved it with new bricks, installed new drainage outlets, and rebuilt the stove, as the old one was very difficult to cook.

The pillars and walls were repainted with tung oil, and Zhang the carpenter was asked to make a cat door for Xiaoye near the entrance so that it could easily come and go.

I changed the bed curtains and pillowcases, and even went to the general store to buy things like tables, chairs, bowls, chopsticks, and other items. The room, which had been tidied up but was still crowded, was finally neat and tidy, with everything having its place.

Wang Yuelan had a designated spot for reeling silk and handling silk floss, while Xiao He had a cabinet and several small chairs specifically for storing her playthings, which she could use when her friends came to play.

Lin Xiushui stood under the courtyard, looking up to see the light, which was very bright and strong.

It's already mid-April, the Lesser Fullness solar term. Peas are blooming, rapeseed is bearing fruit, and silkworms are spinning new silk.

The river was crowded with boats everywhere. Lin Xiushui couldn't travel by water because silk boats and silkworm boats blocked her way, so she had to walk.

However, the people on both sides of the river who relied on her for repair work had no time to deliver things if her boat didn't come.

This gave rise to a new way of making money: some people rowed boats to take on sewing jobs, while others went from street to street knocking on a wooden clapper to collect mended items and deliver them to Lin Xiushui.

They are known as errand runners and menders.

Lin Xiushui said that she saw that she was bored, so she found her work to do everywhere.

She just wants to supplement everything, not that she claims to be able to supplement everything!

Author's note: This chapter has been corrected, and there will be a red envelope as an apology in this chapter.