My mother died last week and it's among the things she specifically willed to me. I can't find a definition anywhere and since I have to collect everything this weekend I'd like to be able to recognise it.
Sorry to hear about your loss Mary - my condolences to you.
Up here in Lancashire, we use the word "maiden" (possibly a shortening of handmaiden) to mean a sort of framework to hang clothes on to dry, after coming out of the washing machine. Some call it a clotheshorse.
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shows a dolls-house version but it's exactly what we call a maiden.
She was born in Yorkshire and moved to Lancashire about thirty years ago. I've lived in Yorkshire all my life and haven't heard of it. But you've given me another idea - a dialect specialist might know.
I did wonder about that, we call it a clothes horse or sometimes a clothes maiden or a "winter 'edge". What puts me off that are two things: I've never heard my mother call it a handmaiden, she taught me it was a clothes horse, and there's an expanding clothes airer in the same list.
That's nice, next week I'm taking my ancient dolls' house to a grand daughter, with all the equally ancient contents. There's a clothes horse in that but it's a wooden frame with wire rails. My godfather made the house and furniture during wartime, he had access to small quantities of some materials because he was a plumber. The house even has stained glass windows!
I think it's going to be a clothes horse - and I already have four :-)
That's interesting but Mum hadn't done any embroidery in donkey's years, she gave me her round and oval embroidery frames decades ago. But if I find any I'll decide on that interpretation!
Thanks to EVERYONE, I didn't think I'd have such a response.
And for your condolences. Mum was 96 and died suddenly but peacefully in her sleep, she didn't suffer and wasn't really aware of any world outside her television for the last few years so it wasn't a tragedy.
I'll report on what I find though, just for interest.
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