Frills, Fads and Foibles

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 300, 10 March 1928, Page 23

Frills, Fads and Foibles

( Continued )

MRS. PEPYS’S DIARY MONDAY. —Last week writing in this my diary how to make a Grape Catsup of the cheap fruit now to be bought, the same doth remind me of a fine recipe for Grape Jam. The way is to take your grapes, separating the skin from the pulp, keeping them apart. Then put the pulp into your preserving pan with one teacupful of water. When thoroughly heated run all through your colander to separate the seeds; then to them you may put

ECONOMICAL DECORATIONS UNFADING FLOWERS By POPPY BACON. Very few women, if any, rely entirely on fregh flowers as their sole means of decoration. There are any number of good, artificial blooms to choose from. Certainly the initial cost is heavy, but when one considers that it is a big bill against numerous small ones for fresh flowers, these seeming extravagances are actually nothing of the sort. » Many women invest in shell flowers, for the simpler reproductions are by no means prohibitive in price. Anemones, in lovely natural colours, complete with little neck ruffs of waxed leaves, are about the most successful of the cheaper varieties. Nine or a dozen in a vase are quite sufficient. In the same category come wistaria and laburnum. Beautiful sprays, left to hang over a flat bowl, are certainly less expensive than a weekly change of cut flowers. As a dinner table decoration shell flowers prove their worth. Water lilies are delightful. They are made with curly stems, and great shining leaves, which hang as though they are floating flatly on a pond. Wild roses are other flowers made from shells, while more ambitious plans, in which lighting and decoration are combined, are the use of gleaming magnolias containing electric light bulbs in place of stamens, and more original posies of rather unnatural blooms are lighted in much the same way. Those of us who can afford to be tempted by extravagances now and then will find it hard to decide which they shall be. More up-to-date than shell flowers are the china and glass specimens. There are beautiful little crystal trees, in shape quite like the pictures we know of Japanese trees. They are made of delicate crystal beads, carefully strung on thin wire. Here and there a small flower of jade is attached. The base is of roughly moulded glass. Other variations of the same idea are carried out with coral. The roughly chipped stones are reminiscent of the quaintly strung necklaces of our childhood. Again a or perhaps crystal, flower, makes a note of colour. I must add that for all their glory these decorations stand no higher than 24 inches at the most — some only six inches high. Newer than the trees are tall stalks of crysthl corn, so intricately made that each small ear is movable. They are even complete with glass whiskers, and are very much on the same scale as the real thing. Another idea in glass decorations is a perfectly copied Madonna lily, with movable stamens. As far as the lilies and the corn are concerned, they only appear unshaded. But I have lost my heart to a window box full of tulips, obviously intended for the side of the window only. Even the glass leaves are naturally turned, and the bulbousness is visible. Some are unshaded, and others tinted a deep rosy colour. In every instance the leaves are coloured a pale green. Little pots of china flowers, sold complete with their foliage, china mould and vase, are likely to capture our affections. To my mind hyacinths are most delightfully reproduced—indeed, unless one actually touches them it is impossible to detect artificiality.