Mentha spicata - Spearmint oil for pressing and ironing

[Kristof]

Hi everyone!

As I wrote in http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...47/index2.html I used an old domestic remedy for pressing tbe pleats into my kilt: The oil of the spearmint or "mentha spicata" in latin.

The head of the costume department at th theater were I work uses it to get any wrinkles out of fabric. Even the machine made crease in bought trousers canbe made undone (sometimes they have to alter bought trousers for a costume and then the crease isn't at tbe right place anymore).

But it works the other way too! I first used the oil when pressing the hem into the lining of my kilt before sewing it in. It's plain cotton fabric and with a little oil in the water of the electric iron I got a very sharp hem in no time. And for the pleats it worked as well.

Now the question is: Do you get spearmint oil, the essential oil of the "mentha spicata" outside germany? I can order nearly every kind of oil and other chemicals at my local pharmacy. Can maybe one from every other country here in this forum go and look for it and tell us, if and where you can buy the oil?

You need a vew drops for 100 ml water. Be careful, it's a very thin oil so there will come out a lot from the bottle. One can use it either in the steam iron or steam iron station or spray it on a ironing cloth and use it with a dry iron. Forget all that chemical stuff and use this very old domestic remedy. And it helps breathing if you have a cold, too. Tbe spearmint scent is not very strong in such an amount of water, but you can smell and feel it. But I don't have the feeling of wearing a chewing gum kilt at all :-)