Æsthetic – Page 84 – Deborah Makarios

June 14, 2014

Teapots and Tarnish

There’s something very community-oriented about a teapot. I have a friend who’s considering a teapot tattoo for this very reason. By virtue of its capacity, the teapot suggests the inclusion of more than one person, and by virtue of its contents it promotes communal relaxation, recreation and refreshment.

I decided to have a tea-party this weekend, and I had already issued the invitations when I came to a sudden and somewhat dreadful realization. While being amply supplied with loose-leaf tea (Ceylon; Earl Grey; rooibos with manuka; green with jasmine), I had only one teapot, and that a small one. There was only one possible solution: mount a raid on the second-hand shops. I heroically volunteered.

Too much choice is stressful, so I made the selection process simpler by rejecting out of hand any which were one-cup, cracked, or lacking a built-in strainer. This reduced the pool of possibles to three, which I duly bought.
So, in addition to my original teapot, a wicker-handled blue with Chinese characters, I now have a round little green pot, a larger honey-brown pot, and a 1 1/2 pint silver pot, which is rather reminiscent of a watering can. (Please do not embarrass the management by suggesting the concept of a matching set.)

The problem with the silver pot was that it wasn’t silver. I mean, it was EPNS (electro-plated nickel silver) but in colour it was more like the sheen on a car-park puddle. Not the sort of look that encourages one to drink the contents. I bought it in the hope that it was just tarnished, and behold, my hope was rewarded.

Not being a fan of the reek of silver-polish, I used a handy little trick passed on to me by the Caped Gooseberry’s mother. She has a history of providing handy tips: when I was eight, she demonstrated how to break an assailant’s nose (without assistant assailant) – a great first memory to have of one’s mother-in-law.

The silver-polishing trick requires hot water, tin foil and washing soda – still available at the shops in this day and age! The tin foil lines the sink or bowl; the hot water is added and the washing soda dissolved in it. In goes the tarnished silver and off goes the tarnish. Remove, rinse, dry. Voilà.

According to the back of my washing soda packet, the soda and tin foil react to produce hydrogen, which removes the silver oxide, aka tarnish. That’s the science, anyway. Frankly, I’m not too fussed as long as it works and doesn’t asphyxiate me. Plus there are bubbles and fizzy noises!

What are your household tips and tricks? And do you have any hints for tea-partying?

June 11, 2014

Quote: Hello, Hat!

“If a woman rebels against high heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat.”
George Bernard Shaw

May 17, 2014

Those Darned Socks!

Following on from what to do with a single ugly sock, today we have what to do with a matching pair of much-loved or simply useful socks which have holes in them: Darning. More traditional than ‘wocksidermy but less dramatic.

In honour of Lost Sock Memorial Day (May 9th) I decided to finally get around to darning my out-of-action bed/boot socks. (One of the downsides of having small feet is having to wear thick socks to make your boots fit – I refuse to wear children’s boots. The other downside is the pascals.)

Darning is a grand old tradition in the spirit of “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” – or possibly the spirit of “I spent ages knitting those socks, I’m not going to get rid of them just because there’s a worn bit!” (Full disclosure: these particular socks are machine-made; there hasn’t been enough time for me to wear out a pair since I finally learned how to knit them.)

I was, however, somewhat hampered by not having one of these:

They’re stone darning eggs (although I suspect the one on the right of having at some point in history been part of a tree). I don’t have a darning mushroom, either, although most of the ones I’ve come across seem suited for Big Manly Feet – i.e. would stretch my socks out of all proportion.

The Internet contains a variety of suggestions as to what one could substitute for a darning egg or mushroom. These include a baseball bat (don’t have one), a lightbulb (don’t have the nerve), a lemon (don’t really need a sewn-in deodorizer that size) or a plastic Easter egg (what’s the point of an Easter egg that isn’t made of chocolate?).

So instead of an egg, I used an egg timer in the shape of a chicken. Darning is one of the few areas in which I think we can be certain the egg came before the chicken. Darning aside, I usually fall on the chicken side of the debate, because if the egg came first, who would incubate it?

I used two different sorts of darning – one traditional, one not – but I will spare you the sight of the results. There’s enough ugliness in the world as it is. Instead, have a gratuitous cat picture.

Well, not quite gratuitous – this is a leading cause of a) missing sock syndrome and b) holes in socks, after all.

On the sock which actually had a hole in it, I used the traditional cross-hatching darn, something like this:

Not that neat and tidy, obviously, particularly considering I was using it on a knitted item.
Verdict: time-consuming and boring to do, but durable and uses relatively little yarn. Also less obvious as a mend – assuming you use a yarn that matches (I didn’t).

I had seen a mention somewhere of a crocheted darn for socks which doubles as reinforcement. I can’t crochet (yet) so on the other sock, which was merely working up to having a hole, I did a running stitch around the worn patch and then used that as a base for blanket stitch. Around and around I went until the stitches were close enough to meet.
Verdict: uses a lot of yarn, but less time than traditional darning. More fun to do but, I suspect, less durable. Also it’s hard to hide what appears to be a very dense spiderweb slowly devouring your foot (especially if, like me, you use a contrasting yarn).

So there you have it. Go forth and love thy socks, single or paired, and don’t let a lack of actual knowledge, skill or practice put you off doing a mend on a much-loved pair you aren’t ready to let go of yet.