The Eerie MacBride Card Room Where the Pattern Wouldn’t Hold

Crossing into the card room, a muted scent of lanolin mingles with old tobacco. The carpet hushes each step, as though guarding a hesitation stitched into the stillness. Nothing indicates abrupt departure, yet every thread and shuttle seems caught in a quiet argument with the past—careful work interrupted before its pattern could steady.

A Weaver’s Life Twined with the Loom

Ewan Callum MacBride, born 1876 in Inverness, wove modest tartan lengths for tailors and traveling peddlers. A woolen wrap from his sister Mairi cushions skeins sorted by shade. Ewan began at dawn stretching warps, spent afternoons threading shuttles, and worked evenings smoothing selvedges beneath the low lamp. His humble upbringing shows in repurposed bobbins and frayed heddles mended with thrift and patience.

Threads Pulled Through a Room of Cards and Memory

A tartan draft pinned to a wall sags at one corner, as though rechecked too often. Dyed wool rests on former card tables in small, careful heaps. A tin of starch sits uncapped near rulers marked with Gaelic script. The treadled frame bears faint scratches where Ewan tested tension. A shuttle loaded with crimson yarn lies beside a strip whose pattern drifts off-count, hinting at an unseen strain.

Strain Woven into Quiet Corners

Behind a stack of baize chairs lies a returned note claiming “irregular spacing.” A selvedge strip shows tug marks where tension slipped. The card table’s felt bears shallow grooves from pacing feet. A pair of shears rests too neatly beside an abandoned draft, blade angled toward a correction never made.

Returning to the card room, one last sign remains: a flawless tartan swatch set beside its misaligned twin—order and doubt resting together in fading lamplight.

The house remains abandoned.