Interest to Women

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXIV, Issue 99, 25 August 1930, Page 7

Interest to Women

DRESS, HOME AND OTHER MATTERS.

BE BEAUTIFUL.

CURING BEAUTY BLEMISHES. The subject of this article may not be a romantic one, but it is a highly necessary matter for discussion. There is nothing more marring than a complexion which is spoilt by a crop of blackheads, pimples and other unsightly blemishes. There are two big causes of blackheads. The first and primary one is— I know it sounds very dreadful —lack of cleanliness. The second is lack of regularity, which probably has its origin in wrong diet. Pimples are very ugly and often they are painful. They are caused entirely by wrong feeding, lack of fresh air, and general irregularity. These disfigurements must be got rid of from the root; your "inside” to use a very definite colloquialism—must be right before you can ever have a good skin. No amount of beauty preparations or the very best powder and creams in the world will make a blotchy skin clear unless other things within are right as well. For the woman who is given to blackheads and pimples I would advise a tiny dose of salts every morning—• it need only be an eggspoonful —when she rises, states the writer. She should also have a fruit breakfast. Bacon and eggs should leave her menu, to bo replaced by a plate of stewed prunes or figs, or half a grape-fruit, or two oranges, or an apple and an orange, with dry toast and butter and one cup of coffee, which should be half milk—a cupful of cold milk is even better than tho coffee. Or, when waking in the morning, have an orange.

LINES ABOUND THE MOUTH. For lines round the mouth these can bo treated best by patting in a skin food and massaging steadily with thumb and forefinger with a pinching movement, keeping to the same area as much as possible in order to avoid stretching the skin. HAIR BEAUTY. A fallacy which never dies is that if the general health is good the hair will look after itself, and inevitably be good as well. On the contrary, the very robustness of the physical health can take much of the strength of the hair. Spring as well at autumn takes its toll of the old hair. If the new hair is up to standard all well and good; but it is advisable to give the scalp every possible assistance in its effort to put forth this new growth. A really excellent hair preserver and growth promoter is one that can be made at home. Finely powder half an ounce of camphor and moisten it with two tablespoonfuls of gin. Put this into a pint bottle and fill up the bottle with water. Twice a week the lotion should be applied to the roots of the hair with a sponge. Shampooing the hair regularly with a good home-made hair wash is an excellent tonic also. Melt 31b. of soft soap in a pint of hot water and add a small tcaspoonful of powdered borax and half a pint of bay rum, and shako the mixture well together. Rub the wash well into the roots of the rair and rinse well with warm water. This amount will last a long time if kept corked in a bottle. It is a good plan to have a sprinkler stopper to the bottle. ADVICE TO MOTHERS. Some mothers have an unfortunate habit of teaching their children tricks. It may bo momentarily gratifying to a mother to display her child’s cleverness, but she is gambling with her little one’s mentality by making him "clever beyond his years.” "Let the brain develop itself” is an old-fashioned maxim that the mothers of small children should observe. Overstimulation and over-development of a child’s brain during infancy are bound to have their reaction in later years, especially if the child is of n quick and active temperament. It has been noted that the infants whose brains have never been forced frequently display exceptional cleverness in later years, besides being less liable to suffer from any of the nervous disorders that are so common in children who were taught by their erring mothers to perform "clever tricks.”

POINTS ABOUT POTATOES.

Boiled. <’o make potatoes white, soak them in cold water for two hours before cooking. To ensure floury, unbroken whiteness add salt when nearly cooked. Baked. Stand the potatoes in hot water for fifteen minutes beforehand, and they will take half as long to cook, and be more floury. Rub butter oil, or lard over the skin before cooking ancP it will peel off easily, like paper, thus preventing waste. Fried. To cook these so that they are crisp on the outside, without being hard, they should be soaked first in cold water, then for a moment in hot water and then dried on a cheese cloth. Salad. To obtain the best results, new or rather waxy potatoes should be chosen; they should be cooked slowly and carefully to avoid breaking, sliced whilst hot and covered immediately with the dressing of mayonnaise. CULINARY NOTES. When stewing fruit never use a metal spoon, a wooden one with a short handle is best. If vegetables are sliced lengthways and not across they will retain more nutriment when cooked. Never put potatoes on the table in a covered dish. They will reabsorb their own moisture and become soggy. When cooking greens the disagreeable odour can be avoided by placing a pit co of bread about the size of an egg in tho saucepan with the boiling vegetables. Before scraping new potatoes soak for half an hour in salt and water. The effect is wonderful. Not only do the skins peel off easily but the hands are not stained at all. When boiling old potatoes which arc apt to become dark, put a tablespoonful of milk into the water in which they are boiled and they will be beautifully white when cooked. When frying fish always put a small crust into the frying pan. This prevents the fat from spluttering and making the stove greasy and shows by its brown colour just when the fat rs at the right heat for the fish to go in.

WHISTLING POTS AND PANS i This is only one of the musical devices that allow a cook to busy herself about other affairs without having to keep running to the stove to see how things are going on. There is, of course, the whistling kettle which sends a shrill summons through the house as soon at the water boils and keeps up an insistent clamour' until attended to. More intricate and ingenious is the pan that, once "set” will announce? —also by whistle —exactly when tho vegetables or stews inside have reached the right stage of tenderness. POCKETS FOR PILLOW-CASES No more sleepy groping under the pillow, between the blankets, inside the hot water bottle cover. Your hanky is here right under your nose, neatly tucked away in its own little pillowcase pocket. These little triangular pockets are placed in the bottom corner of the case, opposite the open end, says the writer. They are easily stitched on to old cases and easier still to add to the new ones you arc going to make. I gave one pair scalloped ends in blue washing silk and scalloped pockets Then to make them very cute, I wrote boldly on one pocket, "Yours’’ and on the other "Mine,” and embroidered the writing in blue. The other pair I made with hemstitchd ends worked in blue silk again—coloured hemstitching is so much newer than white. The tops of the pockets were hemstitched, too, and each had an initial. Don’t forget to cut tho pockets absolutely on the straight for hemstitching; you can’t draw threads on the cross. Now please not the quick-to-make labour saving pattern on my pillow cases (I’m so proud of them!) only two seams and no buttons. I simply folded my 36-inch material in half; this made the depth of my pil-low-case. Then I measured off the length required,'' allowing a goood bit extra at the decorated end, which just falls gracefully ovex tho edge of the pillow, doing away with the need of buttons.

Don’t forget to make the pockets .first, fitting them in place, and sewing up the seams with the pockets sandwiched between.