Hi Patricia: I enjoy reading these old recipes as a reminder of how things used to be, and how people tried to help out during the War.
A famous example is when a show on BBC Radio actually advised people to stop throwing out rhubarb leaves, and boil them and eat them instead. I can see somebody thinking that rhubarb leaves, which are very big, would make a nice vegetable ... the only problem, and the reason the advice was very quickly retracted, is that rhubarb leaves are actually poisonous! That just shows you that the people who gave advice at that time didn't necessarily know what they were talking about. One bit of advice I read in an old bobbin lace book was to get rid of grime at the neck by soaking bobbin lace collars in olive oil. I can see that would work, because grime is oily and so would seep into the olive oil, but of course then there's the little problem of getting the olive oil out of the lace ... Looking at your snippets I'm wondering, if you rubbed ground rice into your whites, wouldn't they subsequently attract pests, and what damage would those pests do? And it seems to me Oil of eucalyptus might be a little tough on silk. And of course, if you just drank the half pint of gin you wouldn't be worrying so much about your clothes ... Adele West Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) > The WI offered advice on how to > give old garments a new lease of life including rubbing hot bran into tweed > skirts and jackets, cleaning white materials with ground rice and using > powdered magnesia to clean delicate fabrics such as lace, embroideries, white > kid and suede gloves Oil of eucalyptus would revive jaded silk and faded > crepe de chine.....Grandmother's recipes for cleaning clothes were proposed > but sounded very expensive: 'For cleaning silk.... mix well together three > ounces of strained honey, two ounces of castile soap and half a pint of > gin.'" - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
