Making Good Use

Thank Goodness for Continental TV

Yay, it's Saturday evening - which means another two episodes of the Danish TV drama Borgen, it's pretty much the only thing on TV I look forward to watching at the moment (apart from the new series of Superscrimpers, of course).  My goodness, but the cut's in the BBC's funding have become scarily apparent in the last few weeks - Christmas telly was unusually dire this year with only the outstanding Absolutely Fabulous worth tuning in for - and now that the superb (but oh-so-short-a-series) Sherlock has finished, there is nothing but absolutely nothing, to watch on the BBC at all - except imported Danish programmes.

Somebody at BBC4 should be heartily congratulated for having the foresight to start showing programmes that require subtitles.  We've had some wonderful foreign dramas on over the past 18 months or so - most of them of the crime / thriller genre.  The ball started rolling with the two Swedish Wallander series, swiftly followed by the first series of The Killing (which to be frank, I found a bit too long-winded for my taste.)  Then there was Spiral - a French police series - very good, and made me feel that despite my ungraded French 'O' Level, I did understand a bit more of the language than I'd realised.  These were followed by the superb The Killing II (and more gorgeous Faroe Island knitwear), and now, from the same production company, we have Borgen.  I wasn't sure I'd get on too well with it at first as it's a political drama, not a thriller, but you know what, it makes for fascinating viewing and gives an interesting insight into Danish life.

I do wonder if the person who decided to show TV that requires subtitles grew up, like I did, in the 1960's when BBC children's TV was dominated by continental imports.  Anyone else remember the French 'Belle and Sebastien', the German 'Robinson Crusoe' (with it's memorable theme tune,) White Horses (which came from Yugoslavia,) and the wickedly scary Singing Ringing Tree from East Germany?  Ah, happy days. 

Perhaps It's Just Me

I was somewhat taken aback last week when, venturing into the Barnardos charity shop in Basildon - and having spied two rather spiffy long-sleeved T-shirts for my nephew - I was then charged 2p for a plastic bag.  As it happened, Barnardos were the first charity shop I had gone in after getting off the bus - indeed, they are directly opposite the stand where my bus stops in the bus station - so I didn't have another carrier bag already that I could have put the T-shirts into and as it was raining I didn't want to just carry them around with me.   So, with ill grace, I coughed up the 2p.

Now, I'm very much in favour of supermarkets charging for plastic bags and I always take my own bags with me when I go food shopping.  However, I'm not so sure that charity shops should be charging for bags.  Surely Barnardos should do what many other charity shops do and re-use donated plastic bags instead of manufacturing their own - which just adds to the mountains of waste already in landfill.  Not only was I charged 2p for the darned carrier, but the bloomin' thing was such poor quality that it had gone into holes before I got home thus getting the T-shirts wet and meaning that the bag had to go straight into the bin.  I'd much rather have been given a second-hand carrier that I could have then folded up and re-donated back to one of our local charity shops that are far more down-to-earth and don't have 'posh' bags with their names on it.

Anyway, such was my ire, I got the sewing machine out and made myself a new pillowcase tote which I shall be folding up nice and small and stashing in my handbag so that I've always got a bag on hand in the future.

Is it just me, am I being unreasonable?  What do you think about charity shops charging for new plastic bags when they could easily re-use second-hand bags?

My Goodness, What a Cheap and Tasty Dish

I had the new Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - River Cottage Veg Every Day - for Christmas, it's a wonderful book which is packed full of veggie inspiration with beautifully styled photos of all the recipes. I've been trying out a few of the dishes over the past couple of weeks.  Tonight's 'experiment' was Swede Speltotto

Hugh's version here

My not quite so elegantly styled version here. 

It was very tasty, filling and unbelievably cheap.  I used pearl barley instead of pearled spelt - which is suggested in the recipe (I suspect pearled spelt would be an impossible request anywhere in SE Essex.) Half a bag of pearl barley - 25p, plus half a swede - 20p, one onion - 10p, some vegetable stock, a handful of dried parsley (it would be lovely with fresh parsley but I didn't have any) and a good grating of parmesan (me and my gall bladder are walking on the wild side with adding the parmesan but it would be pretty bland without it.)  I reckon the total cost for both of us is somewhere around £1.00, so at 50p per serving (and with some leftover to add to a veggie soup tomorrow) it was a REALLY thrifty evening meal.

Last week I tried out the recipe for Vegeree - the veggie equivalent of kedgeree - that was darned tasty too.  I've got all sorts of other recipes lined up to try - pasta with greens, garlic and chilli is taking my fancy right now. 

 

 

Nordic Knitwear on the Cheap

One of the many excellent bargains I got in the charity shops of Kingswood over Christmas and New Year, was this hand-knitted polo neck jumper.  I liked the raspberry and cream combination of colours, I liked the Nordic snowflake motif, I quite liked the price - £5.00, but I really didn't like the fact that the hanger stated it was a size XXXL - or something equally off-putting.  Nevertheless, being a huge fan of Nordic-style knitwear at the moment, plus only having one really warm thick jumper suitable for Arctic conditions (not that there seems any danger of that this winter, but those could be the famous last words!!) I decided to go ahead and buy it.

Now I know it's nowhere near as classy as Sarah Lund's infamous Faroe Island knitwear but it is handknitted and it only cost me a fraction of the price of her's (over £230 for a copy of THAT jumper, if my calculation from Euros to Sterling is correct) plus this one fits me a treat and the Faroese jumpers only go up to size 14 so even if I could afford one I wouldn't be able to fit myself in one!!!!

Very Posh Blankie

My Mum gave me some gorgeous chunky Rowan wool for my 50th birthday in 2010, with the idea that I could make myself a really posh patchwork knitted blanket with it.  Yesterday, I FINALLY finished it.

I have absolutely no idea why it has taken me over 18 months to complete this project as the wool was beautiful to knit with and lovely and chunky so each square knitted up very quickly.  In fact, thinking about it, it wasn't the actual knitting that took the time - it was the sewing it all together.  I think I completed the knitting about a year ago, and I started sewing it all together this autumn, but it took the cold snap last weekend to finally galvanise me to finish it.  It is super warm and very cosy to drape over my lap in the evenings.  It's a good size too - it's shown here draped over the two-seater settee.  Thank you, Mum, for the beautiful wool - hope you like how it finally turned out.

I Can Resist All But Temptation

I've been reading some blogs where people are able to feed their family for a week on tuppence-ha'penny and a quarter of tea (or so it seems,) or have foresworn buying anything new for the entire year, and I think to myself - yup, I ought to try and be a bit more frugal.  I ought to cut our food bill down a bit, I've got more than enough clothes in my wardrobe to not necessitate buying anything new in the foreseeable future, I ought to be a bit more mindful of needless spending. 

So, what do I do when I get a £25 win on the Premium Bonds?  Do I squirrel it away in my bank account, do I re-invest it in a couple more Premium Bonds?  Do I heck!!  No, on the self same day that I washed all my jumpers and thought to myself I'm well sorted for the colder weather, I start browsing on the Ann Harvey website where they just happen to be having a 70% off sale.  A couple of clicks later and I've spent most of my winnings on two brand new items of clothing.

Including this cowl-neck jumper which was reduced from £38.00 to £11.40.  The other top I got - which was reduced from £28.00 to £7.50 - seems to have disappeared from the website.  Both tops are really lovely quality (as always from Ann Harvey) and I'm delighted with them.  Wish I could have resisted the temptation, but at least they were both stonking great bargains!!

Retro Wrapping

One of the local charity shops had stacks of nice-quality vintage wrapping paper the other day, 10p per sheet.  Unfortunately for me, most of it had 'it's a girl,' 'it's a boy,' Happy 18th Birthday,' or 'Happy 21st Birthday' printed on - nice, if you can make use of it but no good for moi.  I came away with six sheets of typically 1970s-looking puppies and kittens wrapping paper.  Sweet, retro and always handy to have some spare wrapping paper in the house.

Quilted Table Runner and Coasters

Finally, the last post about handmade Christmas presents.  I made my sister a quilted patchwork table runner for her birthday and she asked for another one for Christmas.

It was pretty much the same as the one I made her before but with the added addition of some rather fabulous vintage rose-print fabric that I salvaged from a 1950s full-length apron.  Luckily, although the apron was quite marked in places, 95% of the fabric was in excellent condition.

The backing was cut from a very Cath Kidston-esque vintage rose-print tablecloth that I got at a jumble sale in Basildon during the summer.  Again, there were some unshiftable marks on it but with some judicious cutting out, I managed to find just enough undamaged material to make the backing.

The runner is quilted along the seams of each patchwork strip, and has a linen bias binding which was sewn on by hand (turns out sewing on bias binding is a rather gentle and therapeutic activity.)

I made four of these Scandinavian-style fabric coasters for her too.  I think it's BBC4 showing  the Swedish Wallander and The Killing (Forbrydelsen) that has fuelled both my sister's and my fascination with all things Nordic / Danish design at the moment.  The coasters were made from a vintage M&S pinny that I also found at the Basildon jumble.  The pinny was rather spattered with gloss paint but I managed to find just enough unmarked material to make the set of coasters.

 

And a Quilt for my Sister, too

As well as the quilt for my nephew, I also made a quilt for my sister for Christmas.  It was much easier to find suitable fabrics to make this quilt, in fact I was spoilt for choice - hence why there are a lot more patterns in this one than in my nephew's.

Again, ye olde gargantuan stash of (mainly) thrifted fabric came in very useful indeed and I cut out lots of 7.5 inch squares of fabric and stitched them all together to make the quilt top.  I found I had a nice piece of faux patchwork for the backing fabric (which I forgot to photograph!!) and I 'quilted' it by hand-tying white crochet cotton through the three layers at the corners of all the squares as well as sewing around all four edges with the sewing machine.

My sister does quite a bit of embroidery these days and has made a very cosy 'embroidery corner' for herself in their dining room.  I made the quilt with the idea that she'll use it as a lap quilt when the weather gets a bit chilly or as a decorative throw over the back of her 'embroidery' chair.

As part of my Christmas present, she gave me a beautiful embroidered pillowcase that she'd made.  The work is just exquisite - her embroidery is so neat that I thought at first she'd bought it.   What a fabulous handmade gift - thank you so much, S.

A Quilt for My Boy

My eight-year-old nephew is very fond of snuggling under a blanket on the settee so when he couldn't decide what he wanted for Christmas, I thought I'd make him a very simple personalised 'snuggling' quilt of his own.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to find enough pieces of suitably boyish fabric in my stash to make a whole quilt  and I didn't really want to buy any new fabric, but the bonus of having a sizeable (and very untidy) stash is that all sorts of fabrics come to light when you start digging through the pile.  There were a couple of lovely new quilting-weight cottons that I bought a few years ago and forgot about - one has a gnome pattern and the other has hens and chickens, part of an Ikea duvet cover (the rabbit), some 'raining cats and dogs' material that I got at a boot sale, and a large piece of plain denim.

The bits of gingham to spell out his name came from various small bits I had knocking around and the backing fabric was a beautiful piece of Cath Kidston fabric that Mum gave me a few years ago - luckily, it was just big enough for the quilt.  The only thing I had to buy was the quilt batting itself which was very reasonably priced on eBay. 

The construction was very simple - just sewing all the various components of the front together, sewing the back to the front around three sides and then putting the batting in between the front and back, sewing up the fourth side and quilting along the rows and all round the edges.  I'm sure it's not really how you should construct a quilt but it seemed to work, I was pleased with the way it turned out and my nephew was very happy with his quilt and immediately put it to good 'lounging' use.