interesting stuff

[highlyeccentric]

What a girl wants to learn about in Guides: safe sex, handling debt, safe internet use, and assembling flat pack furniture.

And this fantastic and varied article from the co-author of the "Great Big Glorious Book for Girls", including a discourse on gender politics:

here is the final battle for female emancipation: getting the world to understand that just because you like baking cupcakes doesn’t mean you are one.

a sample of advice given to girls over the years:

Girls of a superior position should read everything and be well up in every matter upon which we give instruction. For girls of a less high position, there are papers on economical cookery, plain needlework, home education and health.

The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880

Advice on how to deal with boys:

Although boys go to great pains to show the world a confident front, underneath they are as insecure as us. Sometimes, when it’s obvious that they are feeling sad (you will know this through your superior intuition), a bit of encouragement or a compliment can help them to feel better. One of the nicest things you can say to a boy is that he is good at something, eg, skateboarding, building a tree house, solving quadratic equations.

If you remember these few basic rules, boys can be among the best friends you’ll ever have. And they will carry your books for you, too.

And some simple recipes, which you can look up yourself.

Comments

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

That sounds like an interesting book - a companion maybe for that Dangerous book for boys (or whatever it's called)?

Reading that article, I remembered the conversation I had with my Mum yesterday on the phone, during which I realised that today's women have apparently lost a particular set of skills - making clothes and the like. We came to this because we realised we didn't know anyone who knitted any more (we were talking about baby clothes in particular of course). These skills seem to be disappearing with mums and grandmas, and aren't getting passed on so much to young girls these days. I felt rather sad when I realised that. Similarly, a couple of weeks ago, when talking to Arni's mum about the cleaning of baby clothes, she mentioned that Arni's grandma used to work some kind of arcane cleaning magic on his clothes that restored them to as-new appearance. When do we ever see that any more, in the days of hurling everything into the washing machine and hoping that all the marks come out? She's no longer around though, so it's not a skill I can ask her about, though I'd dearly love to.

Oh dear, this is turning into a whinge. What I'm meaning to say is, we've gained so much in the past couple of decades, but I think it's been at the cost of some other things it might have been worthwhile keeping. Damn.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Dammit. I had written a long reply and then gmail hiccuped.

Anyway. I keep reading that the problem for gen x is that they know they can have careers coming out of their ears, but can never live up to their mothers. I don't think my mother ever suffered from a giant self-esteem thing in that respect, but I do get the impression that, despite all the clothes she sewed and cakes she magiced up, houses cleaned and wayward children partly tamed, she has a definite image of Supermum (based on her schoolfriend's mums), and she's not it. I, meanwhile, have inherited this image from her *and* I know that not only will i never make Supermum, I'll never keep up with my own mother. I might be able to make a decent Women's Weekly Children's Cake, but sewing, knitting... right out.

Laundy, though, I'm fairly confident of mastering. I've got the theory down, it's remembering to put it into practice before the stains set that I have to get my head around.
I don't know about restoring boy's clothes to as-new-condition, but you have found the dutch equivalent of NapiSan (http://www.napisan.com.au/index.shtml), right? Hot water and NapiSan fixes almost everything. And it doesn't ruin colours, although be careful of things running if they're multicoloured. Mum ruined my lovley off-white dress with the red polka dots because she looked at it and went "Honestly! All her whites come home yellowed!" and chucked it in the soak, where the red ran pink bits everywhere.
Bleach for whites; Sard Wonder Soap (http://www.everythingaustralian.com/sardwondersoap.html) for scrubbing stuff. Sard is good for cleaning cloth shoes, if I recall correctly. And one advantage our grandmothers never had is Sard Wonder Stick (http://www.everythingaustralian.com/sarwonstic10.html).
Teddy bear should always be washed in fabric softener. Although i can't remember what used to be done to get vomit out of teddies, for reason of I was too busy being ill at the time.
Mum often vociferates about drying things, especially nappies and blankets, in the sun. Different reasons for the nappies and blankets respectively, but I can't for the life of me remember what they are. And sun-dried fabrics smell nice.