Wednesday 10 February 2010

The Joy of Ironing

The English translation (using the expression in its loosest possible sense) of the instructions for an appliance recently bought at Freitas Braga & Braga gave rise to some fnarks in the Duncan/King household:-



Having identified the knob, cap, head, bottom and protecting sheath and decided on the degree of steam to be employed, one is then advised to:-

 
 
Not convinced vinegar is absolutely necessry but very important is:-

And as if all that wasn't enough, one is presented with the delphic enjoinder:-

Is it just me?

6 comments:

Marisa said...

I´m not sure if i understood everything, but i guess that´s when you need to clean the iron?

Kathie said...

For some reason instead of images all I get are those little boxes with the red "X" in them :-(

Marisa said...

Oh i see..., dahhh!or don't see in this case, ahhaha

Kathie said...

Thanks for fixing the images. When I was a child my maternal grandparents were subsistence farmers in the far Northern California wilderness, sans electricity, gas, phone, running hot water or flush toilet. Back in that pre-permapress era, my grandmother heated a small fleet of "sad irons" atop her wood-burning cookstove on ironing day.

Likewise, for laundry, she heated huge tubs of cold water on top of the stove, used a washboard and brown soap to scrub her laundry, then hung the wash out on the clothesline to dry, or on a folding wooden drying rack indoors during the rainy winter season.

She also used starch as appropriate on clothing (right after she'd finished rinsing out all the soap), then after they'd dried she had to "sprinkle" them with a little water and wrap them up in towels to stay damp overnight so she could iron them properly the next morning, as it was difficult to "catch" the starched clothes on the line just before they were fully dry.

So now you know why I just use my iron set on dry, plus a wet dish-towel on the rare occasions when I want to steam-press. Actually, now you know why I drip-dry everything I can, to avoid as much ironing as humanly possible.

P.S. You should've seen the instruction booklet accompanying my first sewing machine, clearly written by a Japanese who'd studied English only in school, and who hadn't had the translation checked by a native Anglophone. This is why I don't fear being rendered obsolete as a translator of Portuguese => English by computer programs anytime soon!

Mary said...

For no reason this reminds me of a girl at school, who followed the recipe instruction to mix up the dough and then stand for five minutes and just, well, stood there.

Neil King said...

I think you need therapy, Mary.