I made a bolster pillow many years ago for my reenacting... My Landlord is a dairy farmer and I asked them what has the least dust and they recommended I use barley... So I went into my landlords haymow, it was filled to the rafters on one side with barley.. In mid August I did this too and boy did I sweat!!!... and stuffed to my hearts content. And I packed that pillow till I could not do it anymore. And to this day it hardly lost any shape or packed down. And I think it has been about 15 years or so since I made it...Barley works great... I did not cut it just made sure it was packed in evenly..
Faye = down on the farm in Drumore, PA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Stillwell" <alexstillw...@talktalk.net> To: lace@arachne.com Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 4:01:19 PM Subject: [lace] Barley straw Hi Mark Certainly remove twigs and other foreign matter but I'm sure the laceworkers did not cut their straw into such small pieces. In fact, such small pieces would most likely tend to pack down quite quickly. They would just take a handful, fold it a few times and stuff it in. A mallet was sometimes used to pack the straw down. Barley was the preferred straw as the nodes (lumps in the stems) are not too solid and should not interfere with positioning pins, so it not necessary to remove them. I made a similar pillow in the 1980s and it is still very firm. Enjoy your Honiton Alex - - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com
