Chapter 12 After all the twists and turns, it was her turn to earn this money…
"The current market price for spun silk is twenty coins. Others charge two or three coins for dismantling clothes, but I don't charge them."
Lin Xiushui continued to examine the cotton-padded jacket. There weren't many parts that needed to be disassembled. The back was completely torn, but the front could be preserved. Moreover, the jacket had wide sleeves and a short body, only reaching the waist, so it could be made into a short jacket.
She then said, "It costs thirty coins to sew a short jacket as a whole, and six coins to sew only the back piece. But Li Xunlan, you said you want your jacket to be soft and not stiff, so you don't have to pound it. I have a sewing method here, but it takes time, so it will cost an extra ten coins."
She explained quilting, which involves sandwiching silk floss between two pieces of fabric and sewing them together with crisscrossing threads. This allows the silk floss to be encased in patterns such as diamonds, squares, and stripes, preventing the entire piece from clumping together and the floss from shifting.
"It costs thirty-six coins in total. I will take over this garment. From disassembling to sewing to sewing the silk floss, it will take two days to finish."
Lin Xiushui broke down the amount of money into individual bills, especially since the person in front of her was a patrolman demanding commercial taxes, who was very concerned about the money.
Lin Xiushui wasn't just making things up about the price of mending clothes.
Every day, she walked from Caiyi Lane to Sangqiao Ferry, crossing a water bridge. To the right of the bridge was Baigong Lane, where blacksmiths, iron makers, furnace makers, brick and tile makers, and porters lived. So that street had the most women and grandmothers mending clothes. She asked about the prices of each garment one by one. If it was just patching or sewing a torn thread, it would only cost one or two coins to five coins. But if other time-consuming tasks were added, the price would be higher.
Li Xunlan was quite satisfied with the price. He earned 100 coins a day. Although his wife would take his monthly wages away from him almost immediately after he received them, he always managed to secretly hide some.
“Just sew it up, make sure it looks about the same as before,” Li Xunlan said to Lin Xiushui privately, afraid of making a fool of himself. “If you don’t mend it well, and my wife finds out, then the cat and I will be unable to go home.”
Lin Xiushui first took fifteen coins from him, and after counting them one by one, she smiled and said, "If you're not satisfied, I'll apologize to your wife on your behalf."
Before leaving, Li Xunlan said, "Then I thank you in advance. I have to go patrolling now. Please take good care of me and make sure I have 720 snacks."
She really wanted to say that with all her heart, she absolutely couldn't let the cat be unable to go home, and it would be best to bring the culprit cat to pet, no, to see.
Lin Xiushui straightened her coat, silk pouch, and fabric, then looked at the boatman standing beside her and the butterfly-shaped silk kite he was holding, which had a colorful pattern with seven or eight different colors.
At this time, paper kites, also known as hawks, were popular. Only those that could make sounds by attaching bamboo flutes and whistles to paper kites were called kites. They came in two forms: paper and silk, with silk being a little more expensive than paper.
Moreover, when Lin Xiushui reached out and rubbed the kite's surface, she found it was made of fine silk fabric, making it even more expensive.
While she was looking at it, Chen Guihua compared it to her own clothes and excitedly told the boatman, "I guarantee I'm not lying to you. She patched such a big hole as if it had never been burned, and it only cost thirty coins. Yours will definitely cost the same."
This incident has become a topic of conversation that Chen Guihua can boast about in her barren life. Whenever she talks about how she spent thirty coins to avoid paying three strings of cash in compensation, even people who dislike her can't help but listen to her.
And now, she has found another person just like her, filled with the excitement of encountering the same hole in a foreign land.
“Hey, Aunt Guihua,” Lin Xiushui hurriedly put down the kite, “Stop! This is not the same as your clothes. If I were to mend it the way you did last time, it would cost not just thirty coins, but five hundred coins.”
"ah?"
"ah?"
Both Chuanbulang and Chen Guihua exclaimed in disbelief.
Lin Xiushui was not joking. First of all, the clothes that Chen Guihua brought that day were not fine silk, but silk fabric that was slightly better than coarse silk.
If the holes in coarse silk are like the holes in gauze, which appear when you pull them, then the holes in fine silk are like the tips of needles. She would only choose to mend if she were desperate and wanted to get a new pair of eyes.
Furthermore, if the clothes are the same color, it's not difficult to mend them with the original thread. However, this kite has so many colors, and the holes involve six or seven different colors, so mending would require dyeing each thread the same color or applying paint.
She just wants to make money; she's not really crazy.
“It needs to be mended. You’ll have to provide the fabric yourself. It will cost fifty coins,” Lin Xiushui quoted a price, which was much lower than the market price. She looked down at the kite, pondering what color fabric to use.
Fifty coins was much more acceptable than five hundred coins, but Chuanbulang didn't quite believe her and asked suspiciously, "I've only heard of mending, what is mending?"
“Embroidery is embroidery on cloth. There are two types of embroidery,” Lin Xiushui explained to him roughly, using a piece of cloth as a model. “One type is damask, which involves cutting out pieces of damask and piling them on. For your kite, you need to use embroidered silk, which involves cutting out patterns and designs from silk and then embroidering them.”
It's actually quite a complicated story. The predecessor of patchwork embroidery in the Tang Dynasty was divided into piled silk and pasted silk. It was only later that it became court patchwork embroidery and became an intangible cultural heritage.
Lin Xiushui's memories of embroidery are vague. She cannot know the specific dynasty in her dreams, but she knows the tailor's various skills clearly.
This is still puzzling. Chuanbulang only wanted to spend a little money to have someone make up for it. He thought Lin Xiushui was fooling people because she was so young.
He particularly admired old women with gray hair and wrinkled faces, especially those who had worked for twenty or thirty years; just seeing their faces made him feel at ease.
"I'll stop repairing the kite now, I'll do it later," Chuanbulang said, picking up the kite and preparing to leave. He must have gone mad this morning to believe Chen Guihua's words.
He even suspected that the patrolman was hired by Lin Xiushui to deceive people.
Lin Xiushui was not surprised and said calmly, "If you still want to make amends, come here when the bells and drums sound at dusk."
Without looking back, Chuanbulan strode away. He wouldn't come back; if he did, he'd be a dog.
"Hey, why didn't you leave him some? It's obvious you don't believe me," Chen Guihua said anxiously, taking two steps forward and then jogging back, clutching her chest and frowning, "Fifty coins gone! Gone!"
Lin Xiushui chuckled, making it seem as if this Qian surnamed Chen.
And how could he just disappear like that? She bet he'd come back.
While expressing her regret, Chen Guihua pointed to herself and asked expectantly, "Sister Xiu, do you think I can learn this craft? I'll be your apprentice."
“I don’t think mending clothes is suitable for you,” Lin Xiushui said seriously. “It would be a shame if you didn’t go into shoemaking at a tailor shop with this physique.”
"How did you know? I'm a master shoemaker. No one can stitch as deep as I can," Chen Guihua lamented. It's just a pity that no one wanted her; they thought she stitched shoes with the same vigor as butchering a pig.
"Hey, hey, why did you leave? Come back and we'll talk about it again."
Lin Xiushui went from walking to running, ran home, put down her things, locked the door, and thought, "If I can't afford to offend her, can't I at least avoid her?"
She got up before dawn and tossed and turned all morning until it was just getting light. The Chai family delivered a boatload of firewood. Wang Yuelan received the firewood in a basket at the back door. Most of the firewood was mulberry branches, as mulberry branches were the most abundant in Sangqing Town. There was also some pine firewood for kindling, but other types of firewood were scarce. Lin'an Prefecture was severely lacking in firewood everywhere.
Lin Xiushui scooped up some porridge to fill her stomach first, then asked Chai Niangzi, "Madam, are those clothes comfortable to wear? Is Xingge still crying?"
She altered those loose clothes so they only reached below his buttocks. She still needed to change his diapers, and Xingge, who loves to move his legs, didn't like wearing pants.
After altering the clothes, she even went to the Chai family to teach them how to wrap a baby in swaddling clothes.
“He’s so comfortable to wear. There’s no better clothing than this,” Chai Niangzi said, beaming with joy. “Ever since I gave birth to him, I never knew he was so easy to take care of. The neighboring families have stopped nagging me about taking him to the authorities.”
Lin Xiushui also joked, "Please don't tie your feet with ropes anymore."
"I would never dare to do that again."
The firewood that the Chai couple gave them was very generous; it filled the kitchen and even the doorway.
Wang Yuelan washed her face because of the heat, then asked in confusion, "Why aren't you doing your work yet?"
"I'll go in a bit," Lin Xiushui said, taking out the silk floss bag that Li Xunlan had given her. She put it on the table and explained the situation before saying, "Aunt, I'm not good at sorting silk floss. My mother said you used to be a master at sorting silk floss. You can sort this silk floss, and I'll give you these twenty coins too."
Lin Xiushui was good at lying. She was a master at exposing silk floss. There was no cotton available right now, and people relied on silk floss for warmth. Silk floss was made from silkworm cocoons that could no longer be reeled, such as double cocoons, black cocoons, and shelled cocoons.
She could even make the cotton sieves herself, which were needed for making silk floss. She had been making silk floss every year. She didn't say that making it was bad, but actually she just wanted to give her aunt more work and earn more money.
Her aunt didn't want her money, nor did she care how much she earned. She bought the house, pawned it, and borrowed money, leaving her with a huge financial hole, yet she still wanted to help her out.
Upon hearing this, Wang Yuelan looked at her hands. She used to be the best at making silk floss in Shanglintang, but after becoming a widow one after another, she went to work in a dye shop in Sangqing Town. Her hands became cracked and rough, and she could no longer work with silk floss; she would even scrape off the silk.
“How can I turn it over?” Wang Yuelan sighed. “Hey, you should take the money back first.”
Lin Xiushui refused to take it. She was about to go out to the oilclothing workshop when she poked her head out from behind the door and said, "What does it matter if my hands are rough? When I get the money today, I'll buy an oil vat for you, Aunt."
The oil jar is not a jar for storing oil, but a small, round-mouthed silver container for holding flour oil.
“Don’t buy it! If you dare to waste money, I’ll really hit you with a mulberry branch, you hear me?” Wang Yuelan chased after her and shouted, “Lard can also be used.”
"I heard you."
Lin Xiushui couldn't afford an oil vat. Even if she earned thirty coins sewing oilcloth sleeves today, she could only afford the small spoon at the bottom of the oil vat.
As soon as she arrived at the oilcloth workshop, she rubbed her eyes because of the smell of tung oil. Then she chatted with Yu Liu Niang, saying that the tung oil she bought yesterday was good. Then she asked her if her daughter's feet were big. After comparing them in her palm for a while, she started to think about the color scheme of the tiger-head shoes.
Then I took scissors, needle and thread, needle clips and hemp thread, sat down in front of the pile of clothes, and began today's tedious and repetitive work.
As long as the sleeves are aligned with the edges, except for the armpit side, this garment has slits, so special collar bands need to be sewn on both sides of the slit garment.
As she sewed, she thought to herself, "This is pointless. It's like throwing a flirtatious glance at a blind person. I have to sew two thin lines bit by bit. No wonder it costs more than sewing a collar."
So when she finished work today, when Xu San Niangzi counted out thirty coins for her, she said with a smile, "Why don't you come to the oilclothing workshop and work with me? In the future, I can transfer you to a government-run workshop where you'll earn even more money."
Lin Xiushui tried her best to restrain herself from shaking her head like a rattle-drum, and she immediately declined.
Oilclothing offered her limited and tedious career prospects, but working in a tailor shop would allow her to make spring and summer clothes, with a variety of fabric styles and patterns. Most importantly, she wanted to find a master tailor.
She bid farewell to Yu Liu Niang. Her hands and buttocks ached from sewing all day, and the chair at the oilclothing workshop was particularly hard, so she walked very slowly.
Back at Sangqiao Ferry, Lin Xiushui didn't go home. Instead, she waited for the bells and drums to ring in the distance. Standing by the bridge, she gambled that Chuan Bulang would come back to make amends.
If you lose the bet, you don't lose anything; if you win, you earn fifty coins.
Before the bells and drums even sounded, Boatman's brightly colored boat came from afar. When the boat docked, Boatman stepped out, only to be startled to see Lin Xiushui. He immediately looked down, searching for his feet, and after a moment, he chuckled dryly and looked up, saying, "Young lady."
"Well, I'll have to trouble you with this kite. Fifty coins, right? I'll pay you right now!"
Lin Xiushui was a little smug; after all the twists and turns, the money was still going to end up in her pocket.
A note from the author:
This chapter includes a red envelope (gift emoji) [kiss emoji]
Update as usual tomorrow night at 9 PM [hugs][hugs]
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