Cathy wrote:
nice to see the word tea towels - same word as used in NZ
to describe the American dish cloth. A dish cloth here is
something to wipe your benches with [yep I know benches =
countertop elsewhere]
The American dish cloth is the same as the New Zealand dish
cloth -- though in my dialect it's a "dishrag"; calling it a
"dish cloth" is formal.
The tea towel is a "dish towel". Stores sometimes sell
"Kitchen towels"; these are usually hand towels with
kitchen-themed decorations.
I dry my hands on the same towels as the dishes: the rule
is, if it's out, it's a hand towel; if you want to dry
dishes, get a fresh towel from the drawer. DH doesn't grok
this and will use the hand towel if I don't swap it for a
clean one in time, but when he does all the washing-up *and*
the putting away, I'm not about to complain!
A "bench" is something to sit on -- though I'm sure that
"workbench" and "bench test" are from the New Zealand sense
of the word. I guess we dropped "bench" because we didn't
have benches in the kitchen until the middle of the
twentieth century, and store counters were more familiar
than the benches out in the barn. Not to mention that
*those* benches were dirty -- not something a salesman would
want to make the housewife think of when trying to persuade
her to put benches in the kitchen.
Mom's countertop was used more for storage than for a
workspace; when she had built-in cupboards installed, she
kept her old kitchen table. Pity I never thought of opening
it out to twelve-guest size to cut out patterns, instead of
crawling around on the floor! (But I didn't mind crawling
in those days.)
--
Joy Beeson
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
where we saw some snowflakes among the rain.
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