Saturday 12 April 2014

of mangles and liberty bodices

Hello Dear Frugellers!
Hello to Amy Thorpe on Blog Lovin and Zoe-Lee and Rachel Parry on my Follower bar. As you don't link to a blog I can only guess where you come from and what your interest are. Post a comment and tell us about yourselves!

My comment about liberty bodices in  my last post stirred a few memories. For those of you that are NOT of a certain age a liberty bodice is a warm vest with or without sleeves, fastened by ribbon or rubber buttons.  These buttons used to get very sticky after many washings and we used to sprinkle talcuum powder over them to dry them up. The best thing about the rubber buttons was that they didn't need to be removed when the bodices went through the mangle, as with bone and shell buttons. All children used to wear liberty bodices at one time. Which of course had to be clean in case we got run over!

Removing buttons and then sewing them back on again after mangling was a real bind on wash day.
 In my little book of  "Labour Saving Ideas for the Home"(1924) There is a hint re. shirt buttons to help alleviate the button problem... .." For shirt buttons....When making shirts at home, instead of stitching the buttons on the shirt, stitch them on a narrow piece of shirting at distances to correspond with the button holes. Fasten in position with tiny safety pins at top and bottom. They can then be easily removed when washday comes round and there will be no more broken buttons"   So there you are then ..easy !
Here's another useful hint for you   "How to discover a dead rat..... To locate a dead rat in a room catch half a dozen blue bottle flies and slip them into a glass jar. Let the flies out in the room where you suspect the rat is an sit dowm while they fly around. Within an hour they will have scented the rat and all be buzzing around one spot. That is where your rat is. You can then take up the board and remove the pest"
There's more to share from this great book .

EGD and I made some Bean, carrot and cumin burgers a la " A Girl Called Jack" and very tasty they were too. We decided we would like them a little crunchier next time as they were a little soft for our liking. But the taste was great and we will definitely make them again. I costed them out at 10 pence each, without the cob. We also added some home made tomato chutney and leaves from the garden.

Speaking of the garden, We have been working hard in the garden for the last couple of days. I will give you a run down of what we got up to in my next post. I have just realised that I have a date with D. to watch "Philomena" on the big TV downstairs
. Must dash..Back soon
Gillx





8 comments:

  1. Thank goodness you told us how to find that dead rat... I shall now live in peace, knowing that blue bottles will come to my aid.

    I once shot a rat through a false ceiling, and was then obliged to remove the ceiling. You would hardly believe what we found up there; rats nests, hens eggs, small spoons etc. Quite an adventure, and the beams I revealed were fabulous.

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    1. The theory of unintended consequences ! .. destroy a ceiling and find beams. I am so glad that I am helping others with these pearls of wisdom

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  2. Oh I remember my liberty bodice well, they were brilliant for keeping you warm, especially if you had a bowl of rib sticking porridge too :-) i. The school holidays I would catch the washing as it went through the mangle so it didnt go on the floor, the sheets were the hardest because they were soooo big!! Thank goodness for automatics.

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    1. I can't remember beinf allowed to help with sheets as they were all over the place.
      We used to have pobs for breakfast or fried bread.

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  3. Hi Gill
    Thanks for the mention :-)
    I'm new to blogs - you're the only one I follow after being tipped of by YD! (with whom I work) I live up the road from your small-holding, although am just about to move to a house with 1/3 acre garden and resident ex-batt hens! A first for me, although I've always wanted to keep chucks and grow my own; I'm inspired by my almost totally self-sufficient grandparents (how I wish I'd paid more attention). I love baking too so I'm keen to keep the hens laying... I'd like to keep bees one day, but one step at a time! The hens will take priority so all tips welcome!
    Amy x
    PS How do you catch a blue bottle? Or half a dozen?!

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    1. Hi Amy, I am YD. Perhaps you mean ED?! x

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    2. How exciting ! You can do a lot with a third of an acre. Please call if you need to talk about your hens etc. Will you be growing fruit and veg too?
      Apparently you "slip" blue bottles into a jar! errr

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  4. Shooting the rat through the ceiling hahaha...well my hubby did a similar thing when he lived at home many moons ago. He lived in an old place which had 100 year old vines growing over everything out the back. The rats used the branches of the vines as their "rat runs" but also getting into the walls and ceiling where they set up a racket at night ....because he was trying to study he got annoyed at least once and shot through the walls to silence them with a pellet gun. I don't think he got them, but he did put holes in his mother's walls.
    What the young do ;) !!!
    Alexa from Sydney Australia blogging at http://www.Alexa-asimplelife.com

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