At 06:14 PM 12/17/04 -0800, Weronika Patena wrote: >I remember one with swans... And the girl had to make the shirts out of nettles >at night at a graveyard. And there were additional gruesome effects, I think, >but I don't remember. The fact that those used to be stories for children tells >you something about how life must have been then...
I don't remember the night or the graveyard bit from the version I read, but I think it did say that spinning the nettles made the girl's fingers bleed. Later on, I learned that nettles don't have thorns like cactus, they sting. And long after that, I learned that nettles used to be retted like flax to make a much finer fiber, that was still used for very special projects long after flax came in. Today I have two yards of nettle cloth hanging in my closet -- not the European nettle of the tale, but a giant nettle called ramie, which comes from some tropical island. I also have a ramie attache case, which looks rather like cordura. -- Joy Beeson http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it's trying to snow. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
