Where's My Towel?

[sierra_le_oli]

The kitchen hand towels from the HEMA are overdue for replacement but it's hard to find new ones here. What is everyone doing, drying their hands on their tea towels? I decided to check my towel vocab in case I'd fallen into a language trap, but fell into the larger Wikipedia trap instead. So now I have no time to rant about towels or, as a follow

Comments

[shriker_tam]

what's the difference between a kitchen hand towel and a tea towel? Asking because I (in Sweden) am only familiar with one kind of towel that is used in kitchens and I would call that a tea towel - now I'm curious wether I'm wrong...

[hobnobs]

If you can see past the frustrated swearing, my personal rule of thumb is "A hand towel can't dry a pint glass for shit!" :)

In a more reasoned explanation; Tea towels have a much finer weave pattern than hand towels, and are a *lot* better for drawing water off of cutlery/crockery/glassware/etc. Hand towels are much coarser in the weave, which is fine for a soft material like skin but pretty inefficient at drying up the dishes.

Really good tea towels are getting hard to find in my experience. (Although that might be something to do with me being male, and therefore underpowered in the area of shopping-fu. ;) )

[shriker_tam]

Both both are smooth-textured? Not terrycloth or something like that?

[hobnobs]

Hand towels tend to be rougher. Tea-Towels are smooth-textured.

[shriker_tam]

Since you are referencing a pint glass: There are actually tea towels and glass towels. Tea towels are generally some kind of cotton, dry very well and are used for plates, cutlery and all the other stuff. Glass towels are made out of linen and are used, you guessed it, for drying glass. They dry almost as good as tea towels, but the main difference is that they don't leave lint behind. The nicer the glasses, the less you want little specks of lint to spoil their appearance.
As for kitchen towels, mine are like normal towels, only smaller.

Regards, Eelco (who is otherwise anonymous on livejournal)

[sierra_le_oli]

So do you dry your hands and your dishes with the same towel?

[shriker_tam]

Well, I rarely dry my dishes with a towel at all, and I have several out at the same time so I have a clean one for dishes. But they are all the same kind.

[sierra_le_oli]

I think I'm starting to get it now. I guess I just find drying my hands with a (thin) tea towel rather unsatisfying. Sad but true. :-)