A Good Country Wife-Chapter 27 - Try My Hand_1
Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Try My Hand_1
Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Try My Hand_1
In the afternoon, Zhao Erhu sent the young ones to pick up firewood by the mountainside, while he continued to dig pits in the house. Lin Yue cleaned the bamboo shoots she had dug up yesterday in the kitchen. Having peeled off the husks, they filled an entire basin. She put them in a pot, covered it with a lid, and boiled them over high heat. The shoots probably needed about an hour and a half to cook through. During that long wait, Lin Yue went to her room to get a winnowing basket, needle, and thread, and started embroidering a pouch while keeping an eye on the fire.
Although she had a foundation in embroidery from her previous life, this was Lin Yue’s first attempt at making a pouch. She did not choose any of the fine-patterned satins but opted for a piece of light blue cotton cloth. Lin Yue thought of a relatively simple pattern and decided to make a pouch for each of the father and son Zhao Erhu, as a test of her skills. Embroidery is not as simple as tailoring clothes; every wife and girl in the village knows how to sew, but few truly know how to embroider. Even those who do usually only have a superficial knowledge. Someone like Lin Yue, who was skilled in Su embroidery, could be harder to find even among the embroiderers from large households in the city.
Lin Yue’s hands were a bit stiff at the start, but gradually, she picked up speed. To avoid any inequality, she made the pouches identical for the children, with the only difference being that she embroidered each person’s name inside the pouches. This way, her work progressed much faster. By the time she finished the four identical pouches, the bamboo shoots in the pot were ready, giving off the unique aroma of cooked bamboo shoots. Lin Yue put away her needle and thread, lowered the fire, and took the cooked bamboo shoots out to soak in a large wooden barrel of cold water. After soaking overnight, they would be left under the sun until completely dry the next day, which was the simplest among the many bamboo shoot processing methods Lin Yue knew.
After handling the bamboo shoots, Lin Yue saw it was still early and wanted to dig up more bamboo shoots in the mountains. First, because there wasn’t much else to eat this season, and second, she had other plans. She thought of digging up more bamboo shoots, but Zhao Erhu didn’t like the idea of Lin Yue going into the mountains alone.
“No way. What if you get lost in the mountains?” Zhao Erhu rejected the idea without a second thought.
“Don’t worry, I remember the path from last time, and besides, it’s not too far. I won’t get lost,” Lin Yue persisted, feeling that Zhao Erhu sometimes treated her like a child. He worried about everything, more so for her than for the children. She wondered if he truly saw her as his daughter.
“That’s still no good. Even though it’s not a deep forest and there aren’t many wild animals, it’s not entirely safe. Just in case, if you really want to go, I can put aside my work and go with you,” Zhao Erhu frowned and put down his hoe resolutely.
“Forget it then. We’d better focus on finishing our storage room first. Who knows when your older sister will come,” Lin Yue conceded since Zhao Erhu refused to budge. She picked up her needle and thread to continue embroidering the pouches. After completing a few, she felt quite satisfied. Anything she thought of could be freely embroidered onto the fabric without the need to trace designs, which was much more interesting than cross-stitching. This was all thanks to the original owner’s solid foundation in embroidery — constant practice for over a decade. Even if the soul was gone, embroidery had become an instinct for the body. Lin Yue wondered if this was the “golden finger” the heavens gave her through this transmigration.
Lin Yue put more thought into the embroidered pouch she made for Zhao Erhu, selecting a piece of blue printed satin and a piece of dark blue silk from the various fabrics. She cut the two fabrics into differently sized square pieces, embroidered an orchid on the dark blue silk for the lower half, which took up two-thirds of the pouch, and stitched the blue printed satin on top. The opening was designed to be elastic and could be tightened, adorned with a blue brocade cord, which looked extremely beautiful. Having finished Zhao Erhu’s, Lin Yue then made one for herself, combining light green silk and green satin into an oval-shaped pouch, similar in design to Zhao Erhu’s square one.
Lin Yue had also learned about the customs, laws, and regulations of the Great Zhou Dynasty that the common people had to follow. The Great Zhou Dynasty was not strict about clothing among the common people, except for bright yellow, which was clearly reserved for the royal family, along with a few specific types of brocades and tribute satins. There were no other restrictions; even fine fabrics like silk could be worn by commoners, though they were usually too expensive for ordinary households. That was why Lin Yue dared to use fine fabric for the pouch without concern.
“Brother Erhu, this is the pouch I made for you. Do you like it?” Lin Yue asked with a beaming smile as she presented the finished pouch to Zhao Erhu. Although she asked the question, she was quite certain that Zhao Erhu would certainly like it. She was very confident in her craft, and after all, the materials she picked were the finest, recognizable at a glance as something only used by the wealthy and noble. It was because the store owned by Manager Wang was large and catered to the rich and noble that Lin Yue was able to find many fine pieces of scrap fabric and remnants, buying them for as little as six coins per jin, benefiting greatly from the deal.
“I like it, of course I like it. Niuniu, your hands are really skillful. I’ve never seen such a delicate pouch. I’m afraid even the sons of wealthy families don’t carry pouches as nice as this,” Zhao Erhu said cheerfully, afraid that his hands might dirty such a fine thing. He wiped his hands on his clothes several times before taking the pouch, pulled out a faded, plain little bag from his chest, transferred the silver and copper coins to the new pouch, and fondly caressed it a few times before carefully placing it close to his body.
To dig a storage room underground and avoid a collapse, Zhao Erhu had to dig a bit deeper. Even with a hard worker like Zhao Erhu working day and night, it still took a good four to five days of effort to excavate a small room of more than ten square meters.
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It was certain that the storage room would be damp, especially a roughly dug one like this, but under the current conditions, that was all they could manage. Having any place to store grain was enough. Lin Yue specifically asked Zhao Erhu to buy a bag of quicklime to apply to the walls and laid a layer of flooring on the ground before it finally began to look decent. Lin Yue then gradually added more items and brought in two large jars; anything that needed to be kept dry was sealed inside these jars.
After finishing the storage room, Zhao Erhu helped Lin Yue dig bamboo shoots for a few days before returning to work in the fields. Actually, it was still early for fieldwork; other families’ fields were empty of workers. Zhao Erhu was working himself to the bone because he wanted to plow the fields he planted last year and also clear a few more acres of wasteland they had bought in previous years to plant corn and vegetables. Moreover, if he could find time before spring farming, he wanted to go hunting in the mountains.
These days, Lin Yue was busy processing the pile of bamboo shoots that Zhao Erhu had dug up into various bamboo shoot products. Besides this, she spent her days cooking, embroidering pouches, and leading a fulfilling life. That day, however, something happened that took her by surprise.
