The fibers were dyed before carding, and Epsey shared her knowledge of the process while Mavis made notes. Except for indigo, the colors were somewhat drab, but better for normal wear than the dingy white of the natural fibers.

“We get most of our dye from walnut hulls, which give me shades of color from light tan to dark brown, depending on how long I boil it together. I can get it even darker by adding the bark from walnut roots. If I want black, I use witch-hazel tree bark. Yellow comes from the outer bark of hickory and oak, or from broomstraw. I get a clear blue from indigo, which almost everybody grows, or a lighter shade from the inner bark of maple. Red comes from madder, pokeberries, blackberries, or red clay, purple from pokeberry roots, and green from green oak leaves. When I have time, I get green by dyeing the fibers yellow first, and then blue. Then I use salt as a mordant, to set the color and make it permanent.”

Sometimes they would blend wool with flax and perhaps some cotton to make a lighter material that was still warm and durable, called linsey-woolsey. The women developed an ease with each other, even when they remained silent for long periods of time, but they also discussed their common family affairs, garden projects, the drying, smoking, or salt-curing of meats, and always the status of the baby.

Although she was only a few years younger, Mavis treated Epsey almost with the deference of a child for a parent, and Epsey was drawn to the younger woman by this attitude and by fascination with her ingenuous attitude toward life. When Epsey seemed in the mood for conversation, Mavis bubbled over with unrestrained comments and questions, particularly about Epsey’s earlier years, her marriage, childbearing, and almost every aspect of the frontier lives that they now shared. Perhaps without knowing why, Mavis refrained from mentioning the outings she sometimes shared with the two men.

Epsey enjoyed answering the questions and, on occasion, even asked a few herself.

“Why do you always wear lace around your bonnet, even out here in the backwoods?”

Mavis laughed. “I get a lot of comments or strange looks about my bonnets.

“I was twelve years old when both my parents died with typhus fever, and I was taken in by my father’s cousin, who was a widow. She was good to me, but had very little, even for her own three children. She made lace for one of the shops in Philadelphia, and taught me to tat.