WENDY’S DRESSMAKERS

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1933, Page 19 (Supplement)

WENDY’S DRESSMAKERS

“DUCK” EMBROIDERIES ON A SIDEBOARD RUNNER.

Tink has made a pretty runner for the Hut sitting-room side-board, and Wendy thinks some of you‘girls, would like to make one like it. The runner takes one yard of fifteen-inch-wide crash which costs about six-

pence, and you will want skeins of wool in white, yellow, black, bright blue, and bright green. , . , The whole width of the crash is used, the selvedges which form the sides need not be hemmed, but you must turn in narrow hems along the ends. Now. draw a duck, like the one in the diagram. From beak-tip to tail it is four inches long; the body is one-and-three-quarter inches deep and three inches long; the head is two inches from beak-tip to back of head; and from top of head, to where the legs should be it measures two-and-three-quarter inches. You’ll find it quite easy to draw the bird from these measurements. When you are pleased with the shape, trace three ducks along each end of the runner, about two-and-a-half inches up from the hem. Draw a wavy line beneath each row of ducks, as you see in the picture, then draw another wavy line half an meh below this, and a third.wavy finet an inch above the ducks’ heads. Outline these “waves” with bright blue .stemstitching. Then work the ducks bodies and wings in white stem-stitching, the beaks in yellow satin-stitch, and the eyei-in. black satin-stitch. Finally, fill in the space around the ducks with lines of small darning-stitches in the green wool, as shown in the picture. • _• You can work a chair-back and' a cushion-cover with the same design you like—the three would make a loyely set. Another idea is to work the jolly little ducks along the hems of plain casement curtains. Wendy’s Dressmaker. A FISH OUT OF WATER. SURPRISE FOR NATURALISTS. A strange discovery has been made in a creek near Calcutta, where a marine fish has been found spending the months of summer buried six feet deep in the mud and breathing through a hole in the top of its burrow. It is well known that a group of freshwater fishes' practise this habit in Africa, Australia and South America, but never before has it been suspected that a marine fish was adapted for breathing air. The lung-fishes, as the. fresh-water species are called, inhabit rivers which dry up during the summer. The' South American species, having built up a reserve Of fat while food and water were plentiful, then makes a burrow in which it lies in a comatose state, breathing air through small holes which it has made in a plug of clay that it- has inserted in the mouth of its burrow. The creatures in this group are the solitary and rare survivors of extinct marine forms which breathed only through gills. The newly-discovered fish, however, belongs to an entirely different group, the gobies, which are found all the world over round the coasts and in estuaries. The quaint mud-skipper, which hops about on land, climbs trees and breathes through its tail, is a goby. This-mud-skipper, which comes ashore hunting insects, is regarded as a type of the creatures which stepped ashore to become the ancestors of land animals millions of years ago. Perhaps this new goby, which apparently can live for months without water to breathe in, will give further clues to the great mystery of how life came from the water on to the land. THE BEAUTIFUL ORCHID. The late Joseph Chamberlain always wore an orchid in his buttonhole, but even he could not have displayed every variety if he had worn a different one each week of his life. For there are no fewer than 6000 different kinds of orchids and new ones are discovered every year ! Indeed, the different species of orchids exceed in number the different kinds of grasses by two thousand —and you can imagine how many varieties of grasses there are in the world ! As a flower the orchid is very valuable and beautiful, but when it comes to usefulness it must take a lower place than, say the common dandelion. After mentioning vanilla, which consists of the fleshy pods of an orchid, we have mentioned about the only useful product it gives to the market. Nevertheless men have lost their lives searching for rare and glorious orchids, and an American millionaire claims to have a hot-house containing blooms worth one million dollars! Some orchids are very far from being useful. A few specimens are poisonous, not only to touch but also to smell, whilst many varieties act like deadly ; drugs, lulling those near them to sleep.

A RIDDLE.

What happened to the man who swallowed the spoon ? He could not stir. (Sent by Josephine .McKenzie.) .