It's winter again

Missouri weather is doing what it does best:  Keeping us all guessing.  It's raining and windy now, with snow in the forecast for the weekend; the forecast doesn't have us reaching the sixties again for a week or more.  Cliff had our studded snow tires taken off the car yesterday, wouldn't you know.  Such is life in the midwest.   
Someone commented on yesterday's entry that the chicken-feed-sack dresses must have been itchy:  I guess the person was picturing burlap sacks, which were great for hauling a baby pig someplace, or picking up walnuts, but weren't used for clothing.  The sacks I'm talking about were 100% cotton, which in my opinion can't be beat for comfort.  They had delightful flowery and checked patterns, as you can see in the picture below.
    

Thanks to Meesha for a heads-up on this picture.

I believe Mother may have starched my dresses lightly.  I remember her mixing up starch and... cooking it?  Could that be right?  Maybe I'm mixing up starch with wallpaper paste.  Some of you people who are as old as I am, help me out here!  Personally, I neither starch nor iron.  Ironing is against my religion.    
Mother also used bluing when she washed white clothes and sheets.  I can picture a bluing bottle in my mind's eye, with a cork stopper and dried dark blue stuff around the rim; I steered clear of bluing bottles when I was a kid because it could be very messy stuff if spilled.  Speaking of cork stoppers, I think that's what was on bleach bottles, too, when I was a kid.  
Obviously this entry is going all over the place, so just bear with me.  
Yesterday our mail-lady delivered the camera I got on Quibids, and I used the two fifteen-dollar Walmart cards I won to help pay for two bags of grub killer.  Moles are really making themselves at home in my yard.  There is a mole-free area out there around the battery-powered mole-chaser I paid $35 for at the home and gardens show; yes, friends and neighbors, the gadget works!  We'll see if it lasts long enough to be worth the price.  Oh, and if you click THIS LINK, you'll find them for $19.99.  Of course.  
Another thing I got from Quibids was a $25-dollar gift card for Overstock.com;  I applied that toward the purchase of a 400-count sheet set that ended up costing me less than $15, shipping and all.  So yes, I got a lot of goodies for $76, and I have not done any bidding there since.  Truthfully, it's so much fun, it scares me!  I go watch the crazy bidding every once in awhile and console myself with the fact that the only things they have I'd really want, now that I have my camera, are the Walmart gift cards.  They auction off a lot of Ipads (they usually go for less than $50), but I already have one of those.   
After doing the entry about our blacksmith neighbor, I did some research on Zabasearch and found out that all six of his kids still live not far from where they were born.  I only knew the three oldest, the others having been born after we moved to Missouri.  But I remember quite a bit about those three, including the night I caused the boys to set their bed afire, and the event that made me stop playing with them.  I can't help but wonder if either of those boys remembers any of that.  I looked for them on Facebook, but only one girl, out of six kids, is on there, and she's one of the younger ones.  Her Facebook account doesn't seem to be active.    
It's probably just as well.   


So far there are twenty-three names thrown in the hat for PW's cookbook, with six days to go before Cliff draws the names of two winners.