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

[coughingbear]

Now I know about 'rally towels'. Um, thank you?

I think I would call them kitchen towels, or perhaps towelling tea towels (a bit like these, though mine are more towelling-all-over). The last couple I've bought have been microfibre ones from Lakeland.

Is it really hard to find oven gloves? We seem to own far too many so I don't think it's hard enough!

[sierra_le_oli]

I shall have to closely inspect your towels next time. :-)

Normally, I'd call them kitchen towels but didn't want to confuse people into thinking I was talking about paper towels. I will have a look at Lakeland, thank you.

It's hard to find find oven gloves that are separate mitts instead of one long thingy with two pouches attached.

[ruthi]

Oven gloves seem to come in singles, or in a set with a small non-glove square.

I think BHS and M&S and such have hand-towels.

[sierra_le_oli]

All I seem to find in shops are those single long oven gloves which people here seem to prefer. I hadn't realised about looking for sets.

M&S failed me on the hand towels but that might just be Hackney. No luck at John Lewis either and hadn't tried BHS.

[shark_hat]

Yes! Why on earth would you want either a)a massive gauntlet that doesn't let you bend your fingers, b)a silicon thing that's slippy and has a really small grab area and doesn't let you bend your fingers, or c)a pair of oven gloves that's attached together like kiddie's mittens for god's sake so you either have to wear both and can't move your hands independently and you catch the middle bit on something, or wear just one and have the other trailing on the floor to step on it as you stand up from the oven and spill everything and... anyway, what is it with the English not understanding oven gloves, for pete's sake?

I import Crate and Barrel's $5 simple bog-standard square towelling oven gloves. (Thus making them £600 oven gloves, I guess, except that I am generally going to America for more reasons than to go to Crate and Barrel.)

I think I got my kitchen towels at one of those factory outlets like Ponden Mill or that sort of thing. But I had to get hanging loops for them separately.

[sierra_le_oli]

Exactly!

Square oven gloves though? No separate thumb?

The hanging loops don't bother me, all the towels hang off the oven door. :-)

[shark_hat]

Your thumb goes into one corner of the square- it works well if it's what you're used to. (This reminds me of a Bread Products thread...)

[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.