Truth be told, I've always been thankful for washing machines since I spent considerable time reading period novels and realizing that washing clothes must have been horrible before the invention of electricity driven machines.
But tonight, while finishing a shawl (pictures coming later) and a big bobbin of BFL/Silk, we watched a show from BBC on Victorian farming. We got 1/4 of the way through the episodes. These 3 people, are living and working on a Victorian Shropshire English farm for a year. They start off getting sheep, having to plow a field, and totally replaster a cottage. It's fascinating, entertaining and educational. Thank goodness for Youtube!
The fact that is still staggering me, is that it takes 4 days to do the laundry! With the women working on it practically all day. Think about that the next time start to whine about having to wash a load of clothes!
So far, they've shown a bit of embroidery but no spinning or even knitting yet. One other interesting thing is they used black fleece to cover up stonework to protect it from the frosts. Fascinating other use of wool.
Here's a link to the first episode on Youtube, there are 36 altogether. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wash a load of clothes - because I can, and because it won't take me 4 days!!!
I love this....and I do appreciate my washing machine, but I'm going to take a guess that they certainly do not do the four day process each week- I'll bet once a month. I'm going to google that.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why they didn't have many outfits and weren't clothes horses.
ReplyDeleteI'll have check out those videos.