I played as an assistant in ancient times

At this moment, Shen Xiaoye was wandering in front of the clothesline, collecting pieces of cloth that had been lightly or darkly dyed yesterday. Each piece was of different sizes, and all were colored ones picked out from the large bags of scraps of cloth.

A small part of them are printed with different flower shapes using the gray silk method, while the majority of them are tied and dyed with needle and thread to create unique styles in different shapes.

She went around Wuli Village yesterday and gave each of the families who dyed cloth a small piece of tie-dyed cloth. She also taught them how to fold simple headdresses on the spot. It was obvious that the women in several families liked it very much.

So, with the idea of ​​giving it a try, she took the red and pink handkerchiefs of various patterns that she had dyed a few days ago and sent them to an embroidery shop in the county town that was smaller than Yue's, to try selling them.

Unexpectedly, the boss really liked the tie-dye pattern of cloth, so he bought other patterns as well.

After a dozen pieces of cloth were processed a little, their value immediately increased to several cents per piece.

After returning at noon, my aunt was very concerned. She thought that if she dyed two or three hundred pieces of cloth, she could earn back one or two taels of the investment by reselling them.

Then he asked everyone to spend more than an hour picking out several hundred pieces of cloth from several bags that weighed hundreds of pounds in total and asked her to dye them all.

Just this morning, I had just eaten at my fifth aunt's house for a family reunion banquet, and without even waiting for other family members who were still at another honored guest table, I dragged myself home to have my hair re-dyed.

Shen Xiaoye cooperated and used the principle of three primary colors, taking the blue cloth dyed with indigo made from indigo and the red juice of sumac, preparing to mix different colors.

As she was collecting a large basin of scraps of cloth, her aunt in the kitchen called out:

"Xiaoye, the hematite water has been cold for more than two quarters of an hour, and the gallnuts are also fried. Can we put in the fabric now?"

"Sure. Are the alum and alum ready?" Shen Xiaoye was about to go to the kitchen with a basin in his hand.

She put several pieces of cloth that were lightly dyed blue into the water boiled with sumac.

Aunt Huang put the dark blue cloth into another basin of Su wood water and said, "Just now at the table you were not paying attention to your meal. What were you looking for?"

"Looking at the guests at the table at Grandpa Zhuang's house, I noticed a particularly thin man who was always drinking for him.

But there was clearly another person who came back with him last time, but I didn't see him today." Shen Xiaoye and most people in the village can only eat at the buffet. Only a few people will be arranged to sit at the top table and eat with the host until the end.

Huang turned over the cloth and said, "Maybe he left early for something, and you are just worrying about nothing.

I will see how the urns of woad settle and whether the water can be drained. I want to dye Yueji's cloth as soon as possible, and then dye all the twelve pieces of cloth at home, and check the market at the big market on June 18th.

If the sales are good, I will find someone to buy more cloth as soon as possible." With the capital in hand, she dared to invest.

"Hey, Grandpa agreed to dye it and sell it?" Shen Xiaoye mixed two portions of alum water of different colors. Her trip to Taixu Temple was very cost-effective. Not only did she buy several cheap medicinal herbs, she also bought a lot of white alum and green alum from the temple. The main purpose was to lower the production cost.

My aunt slowed down her movements, stood up to see if anyone had come back, and said softly, "The cloth your grandfather bought was cheap, but after my mother and I opened it and measured it carefully, we found that the density of the cloth varied, and some did not reach 32 feet.

Most of them are 29 feet, 28 feet or a little over 30 feet long. Two of them seem to have had their edges trimmed, probably because people think the rough edges look ugly.

I weighed it again and it was less than two pounds and four ounces.

The width is the same. I think they were woven by different people based on the cotton yarn they had in their hands. The sizes and textures are different. They may be the leftovers from the cloth shops in their hometowns.

Fortunately, it is fine cotton. Mother said, we have good quality cloth at home, why should we use these to make clothes."

"So Grandpa agreed?"

"Well, he also said that he was so busy trying to grab the cloth from someone that he didn't have time to measure it carefully after he spread it out and saw that it was all neat and tidy."

"Cheap is the hard truth. Now a pound of cotton costs more than 30 wen, and a piece of cloth costs at least 2 pounds of cotton. If you can sell it for 70 wen, you really don't make any money."

"It's not easy for ordinary people to make money. The north is not as prosperous and convenient as the south. In the south, a piece of natural cotton cloth costs 1.5 or 1.6 cents, and the weavers can only earn a small portion of it."

While the two were chatting, a quarter of an hour passed. They put the soaked cloth back into the white sail water for mordanting and took it out after a while.

The original light blue cloth almost turned into sky blue, and the dark blue became even darker, becoming grape green visible to the naked eye.

This is just the first dyeing, and it needs to be dyed twice more to deepen the color. Before that, it needs to be cooled and half-dried. Shen Xiaoye quickly put it on the clothes rack.

She said to her aunt, "We can boil and dye the white cloth. We can use the new stove that grandpa built."

Just as my aunt-in-law said ok in the kitchen, a carriage came from outside the courtyard wall and stopped in front of her door after a while.

Then a woman in a pine green jacket and skirt got out of the car. She stood at the door and asked with a smile, "Excuse me, is this the house of the twelfth aunt?

My surname is Fang, and I am the housekeeper of the Lin residence in Wuli Village. I have been ordered by the ninth wife of the family to come to my aunt's house to dye some cloth."

"Oh, please come in." Shen Xiaoye knew that her grandmother was the twelfth among the Lin girls of her generation, and the ninth wife mentioned by the other party seemed to be the wife of Master Lin.

She put down another batch of cloth scraps that had been put into the basin and walked to the door. Her aunt Huang naturally came out to greet her, "It's Madam Fang. Please come in and have a glass of water."

The housekeeper immediately gave another blessing gift, and quickly worked with the coachman to carry down ten pieces of fine cotton cloth, all of which were pure white.

When business came to the door, Shen Xiaoye didn't ask her aunt and seemed to know the other party. She happily took it and quickly served them tea.

After a few polite words, Madam Fang also knew that the aunt was not at home, so she did not ask any more questions. She looked at the various small pieces of cloth on the drying rack in the yard, which were colorful and lively. She glanced at the batch that had just been hung and said, "Oh, there is also sky blue?"

"I just tried dyeing it, but I don't know how it will turn out in the end." Huang said modestly.

Madam Fang said: "It must be very good. Yesterday our wife saw a relative wearing a very unique cloth ornament. After asking, she found out that it was dyed by our aunt's family.

Now, my family needs a batch of light blue and green fabrics, so I sent them to my aunt.

Ask me to bring the silver as well." Then he took out two silver ingots weighing one liang from his purse and pushed them over. "These are three feet long cloth, a total of one liang and six qian of silver. Madam Huang, weigh them."

Huang accepted it generously. She was able to estimate the value of the silver after handling it, and it was of very good quality. "Wait a moment, I'll find someone to cut it open."

Madam Fang waved her hands repeatedly: "No, no, I think the cloth in this yard is quite good. Do you have a roll of the lotus brown cloth?"

"Of course." Shen Xiaoye said when her aunt looked over, "But do you want Songjiang cloth or local cloth?"

"Local ones will do." Madam Fang bought it for Laozi's mother, "but I don't know how much it costs?"