A short-story about the tragic life-span of kitchen cloths
I LOVE dishcloths!! I especially LOVE NEW dishcloths!! I buy them and then I hide them. I hide them in dark corners in my walk-in pantry. I hide them between my out-of-season linen sets. I hide them in the back of kitchen drawers. But ALAS, someone always find them and use them and abuse them and then they look sad and septic and then I HATE them.
I have tried various methods to revive old dishcloths. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation does not work, the Bleach-of-life just makes them look worse (see below), and no amount of effort, tender-loving- care and soothing words can bring them back to their former glory.
My budget does NOT love dishcloths. The good ones are super-expensive, and I would rather buy a lekker bottle of wine than spend between R30 and R40 on a new dishcloth that will look like an old rag in a few weeks time.
I have tried the cheap option - even sinking as low as buying dishcloths from China-town. Now at first glance these look like the real thing, until you want to wipe something with them. They just glide over any wetness as if it is none of their business. So instead of a small spot of liquid on your counter top, you now have a large wet surface where the "make-belief" dishcloth refused to absorb even one drop, but wickedly spread the wetness all over your work surface like warm butter on a slice of bread. Then starts the dabbing action - where I scrunch it up and dab-dab-dab, trying to get rid of the liquid. I then usually go to extremes such as wiping more furiously, wiping in the opposite direction, turning the cloth around as if the other side has some magical properties that will appear like a genie from a bottle if i just rub it enough. Last resort is talking in Chinese, throwing the offending cloth in the corner and grabbing a big towel to clean up the mess left by my sub-standard dishcloth.
So it happened one morning when I shuffled out the scullery door on my way to sing to my pumpkins. Lo-and-behold - the tragedy was staring me right in the face.
So I made a plan. I could not get it over my heart to bury these poor, brave souls, but they did go to dishcloth retirement village to clean floors and other acts of hard labour. And I made myself some beautiful, gorgeous, super-absorbent, colour-coded, fluffy dishcloths. They are white so I can bleach them to my heart's content, boil them till the point of no-return, tumble-dry them for extra fluffiness, dry and wipe and clean and do all the dishcloth-activities I love so much.
OK - they are not perfect but they are better than anything else. So if you want to order some from me (I can whip a set of 3 up in an evening with 3 little cloths to use instead of those slimy, dirty, unhygienic sponges) - please let me know.
The options are: 1) You give me old towels and I cut them up and make them pretty (upcycle) - R 10 a dishcloth
2) I buy the towelling and make it pretty in your colour scheme - R20 a dishcloth
3) You order a set of 3 dishcloths with little washing squares in your chosen colour - R50 a set
Oh and yes - I am a bit obsessive, and because I absolutely LOVE dishcloths, I also made a set in matching curtain material (recycle baby, recycle)
A set like this to mathc your colour scheme will cost R80-00, and this money will go to Melida and her baby Mary. She lives on our property and can earn additional money by hand-sowing the material to the cloths. Look how pretty-pretty it is! (I still need to tidy the edges and the corners - but could not wait to share with you!!!)
I got so carried away by the dishcloth saga - there is no time for recipe's or food tips. One tip from Gavin to help me with Drop-Zone is worth mentioning here, as I know very few of you would be able to walk past a little fallen dove without trying to nurse it to adulthood.
Please save yourself all the trouble with your little bugger, Get a big syringe, I think the chemist calls it an enema syringe A piece of soft plastic tube about as thick as a pencil about 5 or 6 cm long. Attach to the syringe draw up about 20ml porridge and gently push the tube down his throat and depress slowly into his crop. 2x a day and also do the same with a little Luke warm water a couple of times a day Hope it helps you
Regards
Gavin
And as I promised, the "broekies" for my hanging-garden of Sundra. The firs pic is Edwin's effort, but I quickly showed him that these eight-wonder of the world does not deserve concentration camp bloomers, but sexy little Hessian g-strings.
Talk to you tomorrow
Lovies
Lizette
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