A Cloth Menstrual Pad Co-Op

Good day to you ladies. I hope all is well and you enjoyed weekend. I know the weather here was off and on sun and rain. During a rainy break I managed to find some interesting cloth pad and menstruation related articles etc. I have found some neat stuff I tell you. And since this week has been another slow week at the bank, I shall share with you some of my findings.

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The first couple links I have found are pictures(drawings and photos) of cloth pads through the ages found via http://mum.org .
The first is a German padded belt pattern circa 1900: http://mum.org/waesche.htm
The second are photos of a 19th century Italian washable pad: http://mum.org/washpdit.htm
The third is instructions for making a 20th century Japanese washable pad, successor of the 'uma or pony': http://mum.org/panhomja.htm

The website is visually busy, having a lot of advertising, but if you can get past that is it quite the informative site. Dedicated solely to menses and all things relating. I urge you to spend some time there, but if you do not want to wade through the enormity of it I shall bring you links to pertaining to 'washable pads'. :)

The second link, is a video. Now, technically this is not 'cloth pad' related, as the video IS sponsored by Kotex, but we are all women here and the video is at least a little bit entertaining. It is a ten minute video about menstruation by none other than Walt Disney himself. It is circa 1946 and although they do say the word vagina, they forget to mention sex. But, in their defense the video is about having your period not having sex (reproduction). The first seven minutes is pretty informative, and for those of us who have long been out of school, and a sex-ed class is an even more faded memory I even managed to (re)learn some things. The last three minutes, well, let us just say we should be happy I was not PMSing whilst I was watching it. Regardless, it is a neat little find. You can find the video at Youtube.com here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeT45BELVzY .

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For those of you who would like to help advertise for the bank, I have these two images which can be taken and used to your discretion or you can cut and paste the code to create image links to the bank. The square image I made as an accompaniment to the bank logo for forum posts such as at Livejournal. I am not sure what embedding images does to the formatting of the newsletter, so for this week I will just link to a public post at my Livejournal for you to pick up the images and codes. You can view the entry here: http://caramia.livejournal.com/142211.html

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Clothbank's founder Laura (You may know her as the maker at Amy's Rag Bag http://amysragbag.com/) was at the Indie Banditas Bazaar in Seattle this weekend, selling her wonderful wares. I had been holding on to the newsletter so that I could tell you all about her successes in terms of numbers, but Laura could not give me numbers. But I do have a couple anecdotes to share with you;

"...The woman who held one up and said "You would have to be really, really green!" and then came back and bought one later." One pad at a time we can change the world right ladies? :D

"A lot of people were too shy to stick around the table, but I did notice that a lot of my business cards disappeared."

My personal favourite; "Some people were really... startled, especially those who thought at first that the pads were eyeglass cases."

When asked if she would do it again it was a resounding yes. " It was so much easier for the customers to figure it out when they could see and feel the pads, rather than trying to figure out my website, which I am going to be restructuring soon."

All in all I would say it was a success, and you can bet the leftovers will be available for you ladies to purchase and/or withdraw.

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I would also like to announce that until we have more traffic (likely fall) at the bank, the newsletter will be published bi-weekly instead of weekly. If you have anything you would like to see featured in the newsletter, or ideas for future articles, please feel free to email me at missy.w@gmail.com. And on that note ladies, I bid you adieu.

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