Making Lotions'n'potions

Or in this case, bath-salts, because I don't have to calculate the quantities, whereas with the other things I make, I have to get round to making them whilst writing down the exact amounts and time and so on...

Fancy bath stuff is always useful as a present for people, even for men if you tell 'em it's a muscle-soak. It's also lovely for yourself when you feel tired, blue, ill, have period-pains, there's a 'y' in the day...

But the stuff tends to be pricey. And full of chemicals you don't need and don't want. Especially if you have asthma, eczema or a liking for not polluting the planet.

So here's the How To for home-made ones which are exactly the same only cheaper and without the chemicals. Why do they put 'em in... these work fine without the parabens and nasty synthetic scents...

INGREDIENTS:
Coarse crystal Sea-Salt
essential oils of your choice
food-colouring of your choice

METHOD
Put salt in a large non-plastic bowl (because plastic can take on the smells, making your next batch of cakes a bit weird).
For 250g of salt, I use a total of 25 drops of oils. This is on the strong side, so if you like only the faintest scent, use less.
Add two to three drops ONLY of food-colouring if you want a pastel tint.
Stir for longer than you think it needs.
Put in glass jars or bottles. I use old wide-mouthed glass 1950s milk-bottles, with a scrap of silk over the top held by a ribbon tied in a bow.
Don't store them in the bathroom as the salt will take on the steam and set into a concrete lump.
I use about 50g for a bath.

I use cochineal for a pretty rose-pink, along with 10 drops lavender, 10 drops rose-geranium and 5 drops bergamot: that makes a relaxing soothing anti-anxiety bath, according to aromatherapy guides. According to me it makes a bath that smells lovely and that relaxes me because I associate the scent with spending time away from the world, and with chocolate and a favourite book to follow...

CAVEATS
I don't know anyone who has reacted adversely to these but if you have any medical conditions that may react with essential oils then check with your GP; if you are pregnant then avoid most essential oils.
Be stingy with the food-colouring - I'm not responsible if you overdo it and end up with blue skin or a green bath!

Staying in

This week I am mostly making mid-C17th stays. They aren't accurate re-creation stays, because I am cheating and machine-sewing them. The shape and pattern are as accurate as I can make them, and the linen is unbleached 24-count with rigid steel 'bones' down the centre-front but the boning is mostly Rigilene and the thread is polyester.
Part 17th century and part 21st century.

Compromising stays, so to speak...


Above is the card template, made from Drea Leed's Custom Corset Pattern Generator. It seems pretty good so far although too broad across the top so the back lacing-edges meet; I'll need to lop some off and re-do the boning-lines once I've cut the lacing-edges.


Here, above, is the bottom left edge; at the left of the picture is the centre-front of the stays, and you can see in the main part of the picture the three tabs, as yet uncut; there will be a line of boning from top edge to bottom edge at each side of the tabs, keeping the stays from digging in at the waist. Apparently.

Here are the stays half-made. Centre-front at left, lacing-edge (ie centre-back) at right, uncut tabs at bottom.

THH

First, catch your hare...

... as Mrs. Beeton may or may not have written. I must check that some time or other. The first posting in an occasional weblog about ways and means of running a household in the historical past; ranging from hand-sewing clothes to scrubbing floors, from hierarchical practices of a stately home to managing in a tent.

I think that's about it for now. I hope to add photographs at some point, either of Things Wot I Made or of Things Wot I Done. And lots and lots of references. Oodles of those. You can never have too many good reliable sources.

And an occasional borrowed old image like that above linked from cartoonstock.com. A classic Punch-esque comment!

Thankyou for your time, ladles and jellyspoons,

The Historical* Housekeeper

*and, occasionally, hysterical...