Homespun Wool

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 649, 7 December 1951, Page 31

Homespun Wool

Dear Aurt Daisy, Would you, or any reader, tell me how to whiten homespun wool? I do a lot of spitining, but the wool always has @ creamy tinge. I think I read in your columns in The Listener some time ago something about whitening discoloured white woollens with sulphur; but don’t remember the method used or if it would apply to homéspun. Please réply in The Listener. "Scotty," Whangarei. The sulphur method is very good, and I feel sure would be appropriate for homespun wool. A letter from an Orkney Island woman, how living in Auckland, says how hér mother always used the sulphur method for all white wool. Just stand a tin with sulphur and hot cinders in a bucket, on the wash-house floor, and close the door and window so that the fumes rise around the garments suspended over a string across the room. She also treated her blatikets in the same manner when they began to Icok yellow. The articles must be quite damp. Here is the full hint, Lay the washed, tinséd and well wrung-out woollies on gmall sticks or dowelling fixed across the upper part of a big box or packing case or airtight cupboard. The garments should be still damp. Make a fite-shovel very hot, or &ll it with some live coals ot wood (not smoking). Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sulphur, and stand shovel on a brick or piece of tin to protect the floor of the case. Close it up immediately, blocking ell air holes. Leave from 30 to 60 minutes. Same principle as sulphuring fruit.