The Long Winter, Chapter 19, "Where There's a Will"
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
[Ma] put the button in the center of the square of calico. She drew the cloth together over the button and wound a thread tightly around it and twisted the corners of calico straight upward in a tapering bunch. Then she rubbed a little axle grease up the calico and set the button into the axle grease in the saucer.
So, here's how we did it. We cut a piece of fabric about 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches and put a penny in the middle and pulled the fabric up around it,tying it off just above the penny, which stays flat. Then we put about 3 tablespoons of Crisco in the middle of a saucer and pushed the wrapped penny into the center of it. Then,we rubbed Crisco all over the fabric that was sticking up and then lit it at the top.
As a caution, it makes a bit of a big flame at first,and so we wouldn't have to worry about anything catching on fire, we put it in the middle of a cake pan.
My button lamp lasted an hour!
4 comments:
Thank you! I am going to try this. We just read that chapter in our book and my son was curious. I'm thankful you posted this!
When my son and I came to this part of the story, he said, "Mom, can we make one of those?" "Sure," I said uncertainly. To my good fortune, my Google search led me right here! We tried this project, and it worked perfectly. Thank you so much for sharing this project idea. Do you have any other inspired by the Laural Ingalls Wilder books?
I made one of these as a "tween" when Hurricane Hugo blew through my area of NC. We are 200 miles inland, we aren't used to hurricanes! We were without power for almost a week, and I made one of these with vaseline and fabric and a metal button. I was very impressed with myself. I need to make one again with my daughter.
http://www.koglenlampe.dk/ph-lamper/ Excellent value driven article here. Tons of information. Appreciate it.
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