Sepia Saturday 319 : 27 February 2016

My Mother used an iron like this one.

I was a keen participant to iron handkerchiefs as these items were in  constant demand in wintertime. When I advanced to tea towels the first excitement was gone, When I advanced to shirts and such I fled the scene.

We children had also a very small Iron to iron dolls dresses. It was small, shaped like a mouse and inside it had an iron mouse to heat up on the stove.. I should have kept it. It was well made with a small, polished wooden  handle. 

An 18th century coal iron

In China,  people were  ironing using hot metal before anywhere else. They filled pans with hot coals. A hot  pan was pressed over stretched cloth . This method was already used some thousand years ago.
While people in Northern Europe used stones, glass and wood for smoothing. In the west blacksmiths forged smoothing irons in the late Middle Ages.

Cast iron sadiron;The sad in sad iron or sadiron is an old word for solid.

Gas Iron

Flat stones were used to rub over woven cloth to smooth it, or to press folds. Linen smoothers made of dark glass were found in  Viking women's graves. Many of those were in use across medieval Europe.  The linen might have been dampened befor using the glass smoother. It is not sure if the glass was made hot before its use.

Glass linen smoother with handle.

Smoothers were also called slickers, slickstones, sleekstones, or slickenstones.  Some were also made of hard wood or  marble. 

Iron with  exchangeable handle

Metal irons were heated by a fire or on a stove. Irons  were made of stone, like  soapstone irons from Italy. Earthenware was also used.

Flat Irons, Flea market Paris

Ironing without the benefit of electricity was a hot, arduous job. Irons had to be kept clean, sand-papered and polished. They had to be  lightly greased to avoid rusting. Beeswax prevented irons sticking to starched cloth. Constant care was needed over temperature, decide when the iron was hot enough, but not so hot  to  scorch the cloth. 

Late 19th century iron designs experimented with heat-retaining fillings. Designs of this period became more and more ingenious and complicated, with reversible bases, gas jets and other innovations. . By 1900 there were electric irons in use on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Wednesday; Intriguing exoskeletons;

Shells found in Wooli, Yuraygir National Park; Northern New South Wales.

Yuraygir National Park
National park in New South Wales, Australia
Yuraygir is a national park in New South Wales, Australia, located 482 km northeast of Sydney. It was created in 1980, a result of the merger and enlargement of two national parks, Angourie and Red Rock ...
Area: 313.7 km²
Established: 1980

I love to display shells around the garden.

Humans have been intrigued by the exoskeletons of mollusks since they first noticed the beauty of  shells their sculpted decorations, delicate colours and patterns. In North Africa Shells have been used to make beads around 100’000 years ago. One of the earliest evidence of human culture.

An exoskeleton  is the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal skeleton (endoskeleton) of, for example, a human. In usage, some of the larger kinds of exoskeletons are known as "shells".

®Photos/Text Ts T

20/02/2016;

Man's best friend...

 ..the dog is my theme for Sepia Saturday this week. I have  many, many pictures with dogs. we always had dogs and they were always part of the family. Don't  be scared I will show only a few. 

I am happy to have this old photo of my grandmother , (mother of my father) and her dog Bläss. Two helpers I don't know their name. My mother mentioned that she was a very kind and loving person.






My dad and his dog Molly.

(I might have shown these photos before. I do so like these two photos.)








Rural bliss; My dear, lovely sister now 82 and I with Lumpi. In the late 1950s. We were wearing black for half a year as it was custom then, because our father had died.




My girls, puppy Dolly and I





Cleaning up the property around 1974.  There was a fire and everybody had to help, all were dirty and happy afterwards.



Jacquei and Boy; it was a good life and childhood for the girls.






They grew up together and were always good friends

Ali alias Ali Ben Ali Ben Jussef but just called Ali and Tomy was a Manx cat, he could not climb a tree because he did not have a tail just a little flap. There was a time when I could not imagine a life without them.  I remember every four legged friend with love and also with some sadness that life is so short.


I left the photos in black and white  and also those in colour as they have a certain charm as it is.

Photos Text Ts

Friday, early morning visitors...

....a flock of yellow tailed cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus funereus) flew into the garden, to settle high up into different tall trees, but their eye was on the tall Alexandra Palm.  I was wondering what they had in mind. Knowing cockatoos it must be something mischievous. Not long and they were tearing at the palm leaves, broke them with their strong beaks and threw them down accompanied by raucous laughs and chatter at the poor, little human standing far down gazing up at them. It was hard to take photos as they were constantly moving and hiding behind the big leaves. Displaying a very playful mood, flying to and fro, tearing here and there bits of again and throwing them down at me.

A portrait of this playful, beautiful bird.  Everyday I see them fly past with lots of chatter. Sometimes they settle on the highest Araucaria in my garden, perhaps when the cones are ripe to crack.

(courtesy photo Leila Jeffreys)





One of them at work...

Courtesy photo birdlife org.au



...can you see some? On every leaf is one or two gnawing. My guess is also they eat some starch from the thick leaf rib. The seed is not yet ripe and I have never seen the cockatoos going for the seed berries as other birds come in droves to have a feed.

Araucaria cunninghamii and Alexandra palmtree.



©Photos/Text Ts 

Reclaimed by time...

Abandoned; neglected; decayed; destroyed; 



Libraries  all over the world have been deliberately  destroyed or badly damaged. Many libraries are or were on purpose destroyed as a form of cultural cleansing.

When a country became  or becomes war ravaged, libraries were always the first to be destroyed.One of the greatest libraries the world has known was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; A fire ravaged the library at the time of Julius Ceasar 2000 years ago. Yet most of the work were spared. One of the greatest cultural vandals was Pope Theophilus in 391 AD, he regarded the books as heretical and had all of the books destroyed. The library was an oasis of culture and wisdom. Alexandria was the center of the world for scientific and intellectual learning.

Abandoned Detroit book depository...

How can  a beautiful home/ library get to this abandoned stage. What happened that people were in such a hurry to leave their home and left it to decay, books furniture etc. . I  would fight tooth and nail to keep a place like this. 

Here, another beautiful home  and books left to decay. Once it must have been a proud home looking at the carved panels and delicate colours. In the panel it looks like carved scrolls of paper and a pair of compasses and some other tool. 






Syria is an unstable place now, plundered of its many treasures. Stolen and sold to the highest bidder, to be hidden in private bank vaults. The Az-Zahiriya Library of Damascus was established in 1277. Around  22000 Books and manuscripts in this library date back to the first millenium.

The ancient world had many and great  libraries, per example in Greece, 

• Kos Library, (Kos) (100 A.D.)

The library was a local public library situated on the enclave Kos known as a crossroads for academia and philosophical faculties. A record of individuals who were supposedly responsible for the establishment of the library are acknowledged in an inscription near the monument.

or...

• The House of Wisdom (Baghdad) (9th-13th centuries)

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Monday; Books and more books...BOOK of the DEAD.

If you want Horror ...here it is

When a massive sinkhole opens up and swallows a retired couple from Iowa it seems like a freak occurrence. But it's not the only one. Similar sinkholes are opening all over the world, 

Do not read it if....there is thunder and lightening...or a harvest moon...or you are scared of the dark...or you believe everything! Ts.

Sepia Saturday Four;

Four-leaf clover  symbols and superstitions;

Italian automobile maker Alfa Romeo used to paint a four leaf clover, or quadrifoglio, on the side of their racing cars. This tradition started in the 1923 Targa Florio race, when driver Ugo Sivocci decorated his car with a green clover on a white background.

Los Angeles based space exploration company SpaceX include a four leaf clover on each space mission embroidered patch as a good luck charm.

Inclusion of the clover has become a regular icon on SpaceX's flight patches ever since the company's first successful Falcon 1 rocket launch in 2008, which was the first mission to feature a clover "for luck" on its patch.

 Celtic Football Club, a soccer team from Glasgow Scotland, have used the four leaf clover as the club's official badge for over 40 years.

Genuine four-leaf clovers come from the White Clover plant, trifolium repens. A true four-leaf clover, its fourth leaf is usually smaller than the other three leaves. 

What do the leaves symbolize?

One leaf is for FAITH...   The second for HOPE...  The third for LOVE...   And the fourth for LUCK!

The four leaf clover as accepted symbol of good luck, has an age old history. The clovers were valued in the cultural life of early peoples. White clover (T. repens  L.) was held in high esteem by the early Celts of Wales as a charm against evil spirits. Druids considered the 4 leaf clover  to bring them good luck.

The four-leaf clover is a rare variation of the common three-leaved clover. Good  luck of  a four leaf  clover is  especially enhanced  if found accidentally! (4 and 5 leaf clovers are also bred and cultivated.)

Clovers can have more than four leaves: Five-leaf clovers are less commonly found naturally than four-leaf clovers; collectors, particularly in Ireland, regard the five-leaf clover, known as a rose clover, as a particular prize. In very rare cases, clovers are able to grow with six leaves or more in nature.

A four leaf clover is as rare as 1 in 10’000. Its relative rarity  suggests a possible recessive gene appearing at a low frequency, or  a somatic mutation,  or a developmental error of environmental causes. This means that multiple four-leaf clovers could be found in the same clover plant.

Researchers from the University of Georgia have reported finding the gene that turns ordinary three-leaf clovers into the coveted four-leaf types. Masked by the three-leaf gene and strongly influenced by environmental condition, molecular markers now make it possible to detect the presence of the gene for four-leaves and for breeders to work with it. The results of the study, which also located two other leaf traits in the white-clover genome, were reported in the July/August 2010 edition of Crop Science, published by the Crop Science Society of America.

The other leaf traits, the red fleck mark and red midrib, a herringbone pattern that runs down the center of each leaflet in a bold red color, were mapped to nearby locations, resolving a century-old question as to whether these leaf traits were controlled by one gene or two separate genes.

White clover has many genes that affect leaf color and shape, and the three in the study were very rare. These traits can be quite attractive, particularly if combined with others, and can turn clover into an ornamental plant for use in flower beds.

Farms in the US  specialize in four-leaf clovers, producing as many as 10,000 a day, sealed in plastic as "lucky charms". 

Courtesy excerpts from Wikipedia/ photos Pinterest