RECYCLE - Today is rubbish and recycling collection day in my little corner of Essex. We have a very odd system (well, to my mind anyway) in that there are no wheelie bins!! This came as a huge shock to me when I first lived in Essex as I had been used to a wheelie bin for the previous 10 years!! I spent some considerable time on the phone to the local council bemoaning the lack of wheelie bins, and how environmentally unfriendly it was for them to only provide black sacks. Due to the huge EU fines which every council will face soon if they don't up their recycling quotas, wheelie bins (at least for garden waste) are now on the agenda for the next finanial year - hallelujah!!
This is our rubbish and recycling awaiting collection this morning
The black sack contains all our non-recyclable rubbish for two weeks (no, we aren't on the dreaded fortnightly collection as yet, my dear partner forgot to put the rubbish out last week when I was away). The two pink sacks contain recyclable newspaper, cardboard, plastic and cans, and that is two weeks worth as they only collect the recycling on alternate weeks. The biggest, orangest box you ever did see is for glass ONLY!! Ours contains about 6 - 8 weeks of glass, most people put theirs out every fortnight and I have been somewhat shocked by the huge quantities of beer and wine bottles my neighbours recycle!!
We didn't have any garden waste this past fortnight so there were none of the 'very special' biodegradable white garden waste sacks put out. I hate these sacks with a loathing!! On yet another rant to the local council about recycling and rubbish collection, I did ask if they had tried emptying a lawn mower box full of grass clippings into these bags, which are just a tiny bit bigger than a carrier bag. No, none of them lived in this council's area, so didn't appreciate the problem.
Thank goodness we don't have the disgusting 'slop bins' which my sister and brother in law have to deal with every week. Their council have decreed that all waste food (including meat and dairy products) must go into a special 'slop bin' and that it will all be recycled to make compost. Now I'm no scientist but I thought it was a well known fact that you can't add meat or dairy products to compost. Needless to say these 'slop bins' stink in the hot weather and are crawling with maggots. I'm all for recycling but that, I feel, is just one step too far.
On to somewhat more fragrant matters. REUSE. Having been hugely inspired by reading the wardrobe refashion blog, I'm going to have a go at making a top from an old sheet which I thrifted recently.
As you can see the material is large pink and tan daisies on a white background. I want to have a go at a kaftan type top, and although I have a few of them already in my wardrobe, I thought it safer to buy a pattern than to have a go at 'winging it'.
I was very pleased with the pattern I found, although somewhat taken aback by the price - when did patterns become so expensive!! I'm not sure whether this little experiment will work, or whether I'll end up looking like Demis Roussos' younger sister - but I'll give it a go.
REDUCE - or not, as the case may be. I had a go at felting some swatches I knitted from the black wool I thrifted on Friday. Not good!! The swatches didn't felt one iota, but I did manage to dye a cream towel grey, luckily it was pretty old and worn out anyway.
I don't know what I did wrong, I had the washing machine at 95 degrees, and had added the towel to give friction. And nothing happened - nada, zilch. Oh well, back to the drawing board with what I'll turn this yarn into. I think I'll decorate the swatches with some felt and use them as pot holders - waste not, want not!!
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