On Aug 1, 2005, at 12:41, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
With as much as I'm handsewing lately, I'm wondering what it would be
like in
the winter, when my skin gets so dry anyway, as much as I'm washing my
hands
these days. I may have to move to a more humid climate -- and one
preferably
without all the salt in the air (dessicant effect, you know) -- if I
want to do
much whitework in the winter, with clean hands!
Since my hands have always sweated buckets, and since I'm allergic to
my own perspiration, I've always washed my hands frequently, even
before I came to Virginia and started playing around with textiles.
Needless to say, in dry Poland, it meant that my skin would dry up and
crack all too often, if not re-moisturised with some kind of cream. So
I've learnt to - as soon as I've washed and dried my hands - squirt a
dab of cream on the back of one hand, and rub it in with the back of
the other hand, re-moisturising both. The inside of the palm doesn't
seem to dry out as much as the outside (and the outside doesn't sweat
as much <g>), so the inside remains clean for work and the outside
remains moist.
Now that I'm back to handling thread directly (in tambour, you have
to), I've also finally tried Jeri's solution, which she posted 2 months
ago:
The man who cleans gowns and was showing us how to fold and pack them,
with
padding in the folds, said he washed his hands the way his mother did.
To
prevent excessive perspiration, she instructed him to use *baking
soda* as a soap
powder. (In some countries it is probably known as bicarbonate of
soda.)
Can't say I've noticed a whole lot of difference, but *some*,
especially if I didn't rinse out too well. But, I also noticed that, if
I left enough of it to make a difference, then I also get the
slick-slimy feel I get from sweat or dirt or hand-oils, even if the
sweat itself is being absorbed/stopped from surfacing. And that feel is
what's always driven me to washing my hands more often than ever Lady
Mackbeth did... <g> So it seems to be a case of "six of one, half a
dozen of the other", in my case anyway.
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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