I have always tried to use what I had on hand before buying new. I thought I was pretty creative until I read about Ann McGinty. She is my new hero!

“Ann McGinty and her husband brought the first hogs into Kentucky, the first ducks and the first spinning-wheel; and they also declare that she was the first woman ever to make butter out there in the dark and bloody wilderness. But her real claim to fame rests upon the fact that she performed an economic and textile miracle. Cotton could be neither grown nor purchased there in the mysterious Indian country, and timber-wolves slaughtered the sheep. So it was well-nigh impossible to find any substance from which clothes could be made. Then the ingenious Ann McGinty found a way of spinning thread and making “McGinty cloth” from two substances that were both plentiful and cheap – nettle lint and buffalo wool. It was a tremendous discovery, and housewives traveled as far as a hundred and fifty miles to sit in her cabin and learn the new art.”

Excerpt from “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie