Making Good Use

Raining for England

As anyone in the south of England already knows, Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday have been a complete wash-out with torrential rain and high winds.  Certainly not car boot weather but at least a chance to get out the sewing machine again. 

I made two bags from pieces of fabric which have been knocking about in my stash for a while.  I've made bags from both pieces before and both sold on ebay so I thought I'd make a couple more and see if they sell too.  Sadly the light is so poor today that I only managed to get a decent photo of one bag.

This one is made from a lovely upholstery-weight piece of vintage Laura Ashley featuring peach and gold roses and rosebuds.

I'll be away from the blog for a few days as my sister, my nephew and me are all off to Disneyland Paris for a few days.  Lets hope it stops raining whilst we're there.

PS Is anyone else being driven nuts by Typepad's 'new and improved' compose page?

Belt Tightening Times

It seems that at the moment the media is full of talk about how to tighten our belts in this present economic 'crisis'.  This is something I've been trying to do for years now - credit crunch or no credit crunch - and I do wonder just how much further I can actually tighten my bloomin' belt without cutting off my circulation!!  For all my carefulness with spending it just seems that things are getting more and more expensive on a day by day basis - travel costs, food, fuel prices, household bills, you name it and it is going up at a frightening pace.  The past three weeks in particular has seen me get through an emormous (to me) amount of money with nothing really to show for it.  Where has it all gone? and what can I do to put the brakes on my cash?

I've tried really hard this past week to not put the central heating on even though it has been exceedingly chilly in the evenings.  There are two reasons for this - 1. I don't like the idea of unnecessarily burning finite fossil fuel when I can manage with putting on an extra layer and wrapping myself in a blankets, and 2. the cost of gas has become so ludicrously expensive that although we're not on the breadline I do object to paying so much just to keep warm.  On that note, whatever happened to the 1970's idea that North Sea gas would be so cheap it wouldn't need metering??  Anyway, after having been so cold on Sunday evening that I watched 'Brokeback Mountain' on TV wrapped in a duvet with a hot water bottle under it, I gave in and actually put the heating on for a few hours each evening.  I didn't like doing it but there are limits to even my penny-pinching.

As regards food expenses I just don't know how much further I can cut back.  Most meals these days are vegetarian as neither of us likes eating cheap meat, and we can't really afford to pay the, no doubt realistic, prices for organic meat.  I already do the majority of my shopping at Aldi (which, along with Lidl and Netto, are apparently booming as more and more people discover a cheaper place to shop).  All meals are home-cooked using fresh ingredients and we rarely rarely have takeaways.

We do have a car but it is so rarely used that I can't remember when we last put petrol in it - at least six months ago I would guess.  At least we are spared the galloping petrol prices at the pumps for the time being although of course the rapidly rising price of crude oil is going to affect all of us - drivers or not - in the near future as transport and transportation costs rocket too.

Scarey times! - has anybody out there got any 'credit crunch-busting' tips to pass on.  At the moment both me, and my purse, would be really grateful.

Cheap Thrill(ers)

I know I've mentioned it before - but I really enjoy a good thriller / crime novel.

Last week, whilst walking through W H Smiths I noticed that there was a new Peter Robinson book out in paperback.  I was tempted, sorely tempted, I picked the book off the shelf, read the synopsis (just to check it wasn't a re-issue of one I'd already read) and - put it back on the shelf!!  When I came home I checked it out on Amazon thinking that there might be a second-hand copy being sold really cheaply.  Well there was, but by the time I'd factored in the P&P it worked out nearly as expensive as the new copy in Smiths.  I remember thinking it would be ages before the book was likely to appear in a charity shop, but there I was wrong.  This morning I found it on the shelf in my favourite charity shop, just waiting for me to buy it for only 75p. 

It goes nicely with a hardback Reginald Hill thriller I got at the 'Coffee and Jumble' on Monday for 50p. 

Now I'm all set up for a no-doubt-wet-again Bank Holiday

A Nice Start to the Week

As usual yesterday morning, I called into the weekly 'Coffee and Jumble.'  I call in every week just to see what is on offer, but lately the pickings have been lean.  Yesterday, however, I scored some very nice bits of linen.

Three jolly vintage aprons.

This one was on the top of pile and it was the lovely green roses print that drew my attention, it just shouted out to be picked up even though it was jumbled up in a pile of old net curtains and bits of polyester.

Underneath was what is possibly my favourite print - and I love the contrast of the red background to the fabric and the vibrant blue of the bias binding.  The pocket on this one is great too as it seems to be sort of upside down, the top being wider than the pleated bottom.

The third one is a lovely spring-like lemon colour with pale mauve flowers.

They're all handmade and in lovely condition with no marks at all.

Also in the pile with the aprons was a beautiful hand embroidered tablecloth.

This magnificent peacock is the centre-piece surrounded by

birds on branches and

pairs of carnations.  It really is a stunning tablecloth, only slightly let down by a very nasty piece of nylon lace round the outside edge - but that can be easily remedied with the aid of my stitch ripper!!

Bags A-Plenty, Bags Galore!

After two afternoon sessions on the sewing machine over the weekend, I finished all three bags I'd cut out on Friday, and one more for luck.

One large 'stash and dash',

and three small.  Although I like them all, my favourite is the second above with the large camellia-type flower.  (Thanks Gill, that fabric is just fantastic.)

I'm not sure these really qualify as Amy Butler 'stash and dash' bags any more as I've pared down the pattern to it's bare bones.  The original pattern has two different fabrics used (one border and one main piece) and pleats to the base of the bag.  I found all that a bit of a fiddle so now just use one piece of fabric and no pleats.  I'm generally pleased with these apart from the tab end of the zip.  Does anyone know how to get these to end up neat and tidy inside a seam or something?  I've had to resort to hand-stitching the ends of all these bags and it does somewhat let the finish down.  Any suggestions gratefully received.

Snip, Snip

I've had a pleasant afternoon cutting out a few Amy Butler 'stash and dash' bags.  There are two small coin purses.

The very floral fabric is for the outer layer and is the last of a couple of unused vintage dishcloths I found last year.  The fabric has a bit of weight to it and an almost towelling quality.  The circle fabric for the lining is new and was bought from the now sadly defunct fabric shop we used to have in the High Street.

This one has made use of some of the lovely vintage fabric Gill sent to me last year.  The lining is a nice crisp piece of plain white cotton.

And this larger one I found already cut out (must have been done last year but I don't remember it at all).  The top fabric is from what is left of a vintage tablecloth that had the most amazingly huge floral border (the rest was long ago used to make some bags).  And the lining fabric is from some floral vintage sheeting.

I'm quite looking forward to firing up the sewing machine over the weekend and getting these completed.

Using It Up

Yesterday I collected together the remains of the four solid-stick deodorants which I'd amassed since last year, dug out what remained in each container, zapped it in the microwave (for only a few seconds - having learnt from my mistake last year) and poured the resulting liquid back into one of the deodorant containers.  A couple of hours of cooling and voila!

A good amount of reusable deodorant.  Here's what I had to say about the same experiment last year.

I tried out a bit of an experiment over the weekend too.  Whilst re-reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette book recently I came across a tip for getting the most out of stick deodorants.  P and I both use the same type of deodorant - Tom's of Maine nature's deodorant stick - as it is aluminium free.  This is a lovely deodorant to use but is rather expensive and it had been driving both of us mad that so much of it was wasted by being too far down to use.  P had tried scraping the remnants out of an old stick and sticking it to the top of a new one but that didn't work as the old deodorant just crumbled away.  The tip in The Tightwad Gazette suggested scraping out all the old deodorant from a few used sticks (we had three with only the dregs left), putting them in a glass bowl and zapping it in the microwave.  Once the deodorant is liquid again tip it back into one of the empty deodorant sticks, wait for it to cool and harden and it can be reused.  I was a bit sceptical of all this but thought it was worth giving it a go.  So I duly zapped the scrapings in the microwave - I think I overdid this part as the microwave was full of steam when I opened the door (I would check after every 10 seconds when I do this again), poured the liquid into one of the sticks and voila, next morning about 1/4 of a stick is now usable again.

This year I ended up with even more re-usable deodorant.  There's probably two reasons for that - 1. I had four lots of 'dregs' this year as opposed to three last year, and 2. because I'd learnt to only microwave for a very short time a lot less of the deodorant evaporated as steam. 

With these particular deodorant sticks costing almost  £4.00 each I want to waste as little as possible.  I reckon the five minutes or so it took me to do this saved me at least £2.00.  And it meant that the empty plastic containers could go into the recycling - something I wouldn't have wanted to do if there was still deodorant in them.

Retrieved

I retrieved this Scottie Dog cushion cover on Monday from the depths of the shed, when it was being cleared out.  I had totally forgotten I owned this and hadn't seen it for a few years.  It was a bit whiffy but miraculously un-gnawed by the mice.  A good soak and a dry in the sun and it has come up beautifully. 

The material is, I suspect, linen and the Scottie himself is really nicely embroidered in black thread with grey highlights.  The whole cushion cover is quite large - about 20 inches square.  I imagine it dates from some time in the 1940's or 1950's and was probably stitched from an iron-on transfer.  I bought it some years ago in a junk shop in St George, Bristol.  I think it cost £3.00 or £4.00, which I thought was quite expensive at the time but looking at it now, and realising the work that went into it, I think that was actually a darn good bargain.

Return of the Rodent

We hadn't heard the sound of little rodent teeth gnawing wood for weeks and weeks, and had assumed that Maurice (the resident mouse) had succumbed to either the cold weather of late March / early April or had been added to next-door's cat's tally of 'kills'.  Yet yesterday evening the familiar sound of tooth on wood was heard from under the shelves in the kitchen, and it seems that Maurice has returned to live another day.

Yesterday afternoon I'd had someone come to the house to take away some of the larger bits of rubbish from the garden shed.  Out went an old fridge / freezer which hadn't been switched on for four years, out went a hideous set of dark brown wooden shelves which I remember buying from a charity shop in Nottingham 11 years ago, and which have never been used but tote'd around with us ever since.  Also gone was the vintage canvas windbreak which I got from a Christmas Fair some years ago and which was jolly useful until I managed to snap off one of the poles in my haste to take it in during a thunder storm.  Perhaps the windbreak could have been mended but it was broken five years ago and, lets face it, if I'd really wanted to mend the pole I would have done so long ago.  But most importantly, to both me and Maurice, two ancient armchairs were also removed from the shed.  P and I bought this very tatty but incredibly comfortable three piece suite when we first moved to Nottingham in 1995.  The sofa had to go years ago when we bought a new one and P always complained that the new sofa was no where near as good as the old.  So we'd kept hold of the two armchairs which were unbelievably tatty but wonderfully comfortable, and had talked fondly about getting them re-upholstered.  It was all talk and no do, and finally P agreed that they too could be got rid of.  Now I knew we had a posse of mice in the shed but I had no idea just how many there must have been until I saw the mess they had made of the armchairs, and the throw which was out there with them.  There was mouse poo galore and the cotton throw had been chewed to b*ggery!!  I was very very glad to see the back of it all.  I'm sure Maurice's re-appearance yesterday evening was in retribution for me having removed his armchair 'haven' from the shed.

A much nicer surprise awaited me when I left the house this morning.  What I had mistaken for a large weed turned out to be the most beautiful poppy.

It Was Hot, But Worth It

Yesterdays car boot sale was one of the busiest and hottest that I've been to in a very long time.  After a week of totally blue skies and fierce sunshine the ground had dried out wonderfully (just as well as I could not have worn socks and trainers this week - no way), but the sheer mass of people, both buying and selling, meant it was HOT.  But I did manage to pick up some useful bargains.

There was a pair of pyjamas for DN - 50p, already washed, ironed and put away ready to take to Bristol.  Two videos of films I've never seen - Lost in Translation and Hi-Fidelity - 20p each.  A useful stand-by for when the 'joyous' summer of sport dominates the TV schedules.  A pack of unopened 50 C5 size brown envelopes - ideal for posting out books I've sold - 20p (now wishing I'd bought the second pack of 50 that was also for sale!)  An new and still sealed tin of Crabtree and Evelyn Jojoba Talcum Powder - 10p.  I do like a nice talc after my shower and the one I bought in Lush at Easter is beginning to run out.  A few good books for re-sale (and some useless ones that have already gone to the local charity shop this morning).  And, best of all, this book for 50p.

I came across this at one of the last stalls I got to and am delighted with it.  There are loads of different types of bags shown.

Tote bags - love the flower decoration on this one.

Drawstring bags, something I've been wanting to have a go at.

And a nice idea for using  vintage ties as handles on bags.

Not only is there loads of inspiration in this book there are also 4 pull-out master patterns for making over 36 designs.  Excellent!

All in all, the rather red, sore and burnt shoulders I had last night were well worth it.