THE SINGLE ROOM

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19626, 21 October 1933, Page 11

THE SINGLE ROOM

FURNISHING IDEAS. “There is something being managed under the hand of every single woman. It may be a yielding friend, it may be a house, it may be a petted but disci-' plined cat, it may be, and often is, one single bed-sitting-room. The single woman’s single room is often her kingdom" (states “M.S.'’ in the “Daily Mail.”) "I have lived in a single room and I know the interest of managing it. I eliminated and chose and tried to blend. "The single room quickly takes an impression of its occupant. The first arrangement of the very first ornament gives a clue to what the whole is to be. Gradually the person grows into it. The colours chosen and their mixture, the number and depth of the cushions, above all the pictures, all tell tales. “Single rooms attain to beauty. These are the ones that have a good simple colour scheme and are in perfect order. They are usually the rooms of women of cultivated and ascetic taste. They are calm rooms, suggestive of quiet thought and calmness, giving a welcome to sunshine and flowers and birds. A perfect spring room I saw this year had cream walls and soft, green-grey hangings. There were great bowls of daffodils placed where they caught the sunlight. “Flowers are often the chief ornament of the single woman’s room, especially if she cannot aspire to anything more elaborate than white walls and butcher blue casement cloth as her ‘foundation.’ In one room I knew, however, embroidery was substituted for flowers. Then the only colour in this room of cream and crash was in the delphiniums and ramblers that crept up the curtains or clung to cushions. "There are two things that every owner of a single room sighs over, the bed and the washstand. Nowadays such clever deceptions are made that the woman of means sighs a little more. For the less wealthy there is the reasonably successful way of camouflaging a small bed. There should be no high ends to the bed. An eiderdown should be made into a wide roll at the back of the bed. This is met at each end by pillows and cushions. The whole is covered with a wide, deep coloured cover, large enough to allow of tucking under the roll and the cushions and reach nearly to the ground in front—the soft effect can be enhanced by the addition of more cushions.

HANDY WRINKLES. Crush some ordinary salt with a mortar, and to one pound of salt add a quarter of a pound of fine ground rice. Mix well. When a spring blind will not catch when pulled down, let it up, take it off its bearings and brush the ends with the black lead brush—dry.