Hi, Linda Tillis here! It has been raining today, off and on, but sometimes very hard. Rain does several wonderful things for us. But, for me, it causes my mind to wander. When that happens, it is often surprising.
Have
you ever read a historical romance and the couple had quick, amazing sex?
Well,
let me tell you that did not happen!
Amazing, quite possibly, quick not so much. Do you have any idea what it took for a woman
to get into and out of those many items of clothing they wore? Just saying…
Can you imagine washing dishes in the old days without a bottle of Dawn? I don’t remember what my grandmother used (and that was only sixty years ago) but I do remember there being bubbles. In the really old days, think Saxons and Norsemen, they used vinegar and sand to scrub and polish their armor, so it stands to reason they would have used it to clean any cookware.
I
could use a couple of new, light-weight summer blouses. I might run to Walmart or Target and check
out what they have to offer. Not so two-hundred years ago. Most items were made from linen. Linen is made from flax fibers. The flax was
grown, soaked in water, stripped into fibers, the longest of which can be up to
twenty centimeters long. Those fibers are then spun into yarn and eventually
woven into fabric. If you wanted a new blouse this Spring, you had better have
been working your behind off last year!
Thanks for stopping by!
Linda Tillis for Pen Dames
Linda, what a great reminder to take extra care with giving thought to the hardships of the old time periods. People had such a hard life, and yet it was matter of fact for them. I still remember when my grandmother had plumbing put in and, before that, the novelty-- to me-- of pumping water. As a small child I remember my mother using washing powders to wash dishes. Because she ran restaurants, she always had a pile of dishes to do and no automatics. She could turn out some spectacular pies!
ReplyDeleteYes, I think my grandmother used some sort of powder as well. She made lye/brown soap to wash the laundry though. Needed something serious to cut through all the dust from the coal mines my grandpa and uncles spent the day collecting.
ReplyDeleteWow, Linda, this is so interesting!
ReplyDeleteYour article brings up many childhood memories, like washing clothes on a scrub board. I was about 13 when daddy finally saved enough money to buy a wringer washing machine. We thought we'd arrived.
ReplyDelete