Making Good Use

Coming Up Roses

I had a very useful trip to Basildon this morning. 

A long-sleeved T-shirt for DN - 75p which was half the marked price.  Blimey, times must be hard if charity shops are cutting their prices.

A quantity of police-themed Lego for Mr Lego Crazy nephew.  The box was HUGE but most of the contents had been mislaid long ago (though there is a lot more than is in the photo.)  No worries, it was only 50p at the church 'Bargain Box' and I've no doubt DN will enjoy adding the bits that are there to his already extensive Lego collection.  It's great to see him enjoying Lego so much as I used to love it when I was little too.  It's much more sophisticated these days as there were no little figures in my day - only the basic bricks and a few windows, doors, gates etc.  Luckily, Mum never got rid of the Lego we had as children so DN also plays with the 40-year-old stuff as well as the more modern kits.  That's the great thing about Lego, it may be uber-expensive to buy but it just never wears out - or loses it's appeal.

Two videos for me - 25p each.  P is away on business at the moment so I'm in sole command of the TV and video remote controls - bliss!!

Also at the 'Bargain Box' were these rose-printed vintage hankies - very sweet and pretty and only 5p each.  If I put my thinking hat on I might be able to find something useful to do with them.

Thanks to everyone who commented about their local tip / dump yesterday.  It seems that the common theme at UK tips is a VERY strict policy of not taking anything away with you.  I loved Sharie's comment that people have been banned from her local tip!!  That is just extraordinary.  It's a pity we can't be more like Australia where The Shopping Sherpa says they have Aussie Junk stores at the tips. 

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that in some American towns they have a couple of dates a year where people can leave out larger items they no longer want and others can come along and 'trash pick' them.  After a set number of days the council then comes by and collects what's left.  That sounds a really good idea to me and surely anything that helps to reduce landfill should be welcomed - including 'dumpster diving' at the local tip.  Not that I'm going to try it anytime soon with the muscle-bound 'Essex boys' (and if you've ever seen the film 'Essex Boys' you'll know what I mean) that are patrolling our local tip.

A Trip to the Tip

I'd never had cause to go to our local council tip (dump) before today but my next-door neighbour asked me if I could give him a hand taking an old carpet down there.  My memory of the tip my parents' used to go to is of something closely resembling a painting of Dantes 'Inferno', everything had to be hauled into a vast corrugated-iron shed-like structure where there was a huge incinerator in one corner.  The men who worked there would appear to sort through what was dumped, and there was always a pile of 'things' somewhere which presumably they were intending to sell or keep.  The one I went to today was completely different.  Everything was out doors in the fresh air, there were recycling containers for pretty much anything you could think of - garden waste, cardboard, telephone directories, books, clothing, wood etc etc.  Sadly, the carpet we had didn't fit into any recycling category and so had to be put in to a huge industrial crusher. 

What caught my eye was the large wheelie bin of books.  I had a quick look inside and was itching to have a good root around in there - who knows what treasure may have been lurking in it's depths.  However, the muscle-bound types who were working there seemed to keep a very territorial eye over the proceedings and it was obvious that you weren't encouraged to take things away with you, or even to poke about too much.  The inevitable pile of 'useful' items they'd put to one side were being kept an especially close eye on.  I don't blame them, if I worked at the tip I'd certainly want to have some perks for doing so too.   But you know the old adage 'one man's trash' etc etc, and it seems a shame that the public can't take away from the tip if its something they could make use of.  What's the way of doing things at the tip / dump near you?

Nearly

It's so very nearly spring.  The weather today has been fairly warm (10 - 12 degrees) with just a bit of breeze and a lot of sunshine.  The daffs are very nearly out in flower.  (I just wish that pesky ivy that gets EVERYWHERE in the garden would have a period of hibernation.)

As is the forsythia.  Everything seems to be a few weeks behind this year, due to the very cold weather we had in February I expect.  And, indeed, there was quite a sharp frost again last night.

Luckily the weather seems to be set reasonably fair for the next few days and the next-door neighbours and I have been talking about going to the car boot sale on Sunday if it's a nice day.  In fact, the BBC weather website gives the forecast for Sunday as unbroken sunshine. I do hope so as it would be wonderful to have a schlep around the car boot again. The car boot season started officially around here last Sunday but although it was dry and sunny in the morning the wind was near gale-force so I can't imagine there were many sellers (or even buyers) on the very exposed field where the nearest boot sale is held  I'm keeping all paws crossed that this Sunday's excellent weather forecast is indeed correct!! 

Not Banking On It

I've been a customer of the Royal Bank of Scotland for the past 25 years.  In fact I started out as being a customer of Williams & Glyns (for anyone old enough to remember them) who were taken over by RBS.  I've been reasonably happy with RBS despite the fact that their branches are few and far between and have never seriously thought about closing my account with them - until recently.  I won't go into the saga in any depth but lets just say it involved a cheque which although received into my account wasn't counted, a further cheque being written by myself to my credit card company, refusal to pay that cheque, rude letters from RBS, disgustingly high charges for what amounted to their incompetence not mine, and no answer to a letter I sent them which was recorded delivery.  Presumably Sir Fred Goodwin's 'sod you' attitude has permeated right through the bank.  (For any non-UK readers Sir Fred was the former chief executive of RBS who is now receiving a pension of £725,000 per year despite the fact that the government has had to bail RBS out to the tune of £33bn.  When asked by the government to pay the pension money back Sir Fred basically told them to sod off.)

After total inertia on my part for two months (something I believe the banks rely on in their customers), I've finally made an appointment with Nat West (and yes, I do know they're basically the same bank as RBS) to transfer all my direct debits and the balance of my account into my Nat West bank account.  No wonder RBS are going down the pan - why don't the government just nationalise them and have done with it?  It would work out a lot cheaper for the tax payer in the end.  Nat West are not a lot better but at least they have a branch on the High Street here and I've never had too much trouble with them - yet!!

To add to my banking woes, I've ended up with shares in the Lloyds Group which are losing value at such a rate that I seriously think I'll just set fire to the share certificates as they're hardly worth the paper they're written on now.  Like many people, I originally acquired Halifax shares free because my mortgage was with the Leeds Building Society (taken over by Halifax) in 1997.  (Halifax subsequently merged with Bank of Scotland, not to be confused with the Royal Bank of Scotland, almost collapsed in October and were bailed out by Lloyds bank to become Lloyds Group.) Loads of people I knew cashed in their shares immediately in 1997 and used the money for exotic holidays or home improvements.  Prudent me thought I'd just hold on to them and for many years felt I'd done the right thing.  If only I'd had a crystal ball and could have seen the future I'd have cashed them in a couple of years ago when they were somewhere around the £10.00 per share mark.  Today they are at 49p each - b*gger!

I Think Not

Our garden, although not large, is very densely planted with fruit trees, two very large conifers, Virginia creeper, various ivy plants, a vine, a wisteria, a fig tree, and winter flowering forsythia.  I'm sure when it was originally planted out it all looked absolutely wonderful, and the fruit trees are still very useful items, however, it has all got very badly out of hand and overgrown.  All the climbers have gone totally wild - mainly all over the shed - and the fruit trees do need a good pruning.  Last week I got a gardener in to give a quote for just generally thinning out and tidying up the back garden.  He quoted £500 for what he thought would be two or three mornings work - I think not.  I, probably foolishly, had envisaged someone quoting £200 tops, maybe £250 at a push.  We're not talking garden redesign here, just a fair bit of pruning and cutting back.

Saturday afternoon saw me and my trusty Asda Value secateurs making a start on what will be a fairly mammoth task in the next couple of months but I'm blowed if I'd pay out £500 to tidy things up.  I started on one of the long sides of the shed - probably about 12 foot long - and started hacking and chopping away.  I'd only intended to do a bit but before long I'd filled the wheelie bin completely (luckily today was garden waste collection day - it's once every fortnight), and had amassed a large pile of cuttings on the grass too.  I've just been out and chopped all those up into little bits and have filled the wheelie bin for a second time.  I've pretty much cleared that side of the shed and I was surprised how much I enjoyed being out in the fresh air and doing something physical.  Every time I got a bit fed up with bending, stretching, pulling or chopping up bits of greenery I kept reminding myself that I'm saving £500 by doing it myself.

On a totally different subject, I was very lucky recently to win a two-year notebook with a personalised slipcover from a giveaway over at Darling Petunia.  This rather pretty and very useful item arrived on Saturday morning - I'm well pleased with it - thank you DP. 

Weapon of Massive Consumption*

For the first time in weeks I went over to Billericay this morning and managed to spend a fair bit of money one way or another.  The weather was so bright and sunny that it would have seemed a shame to stay at home, besides there were one or two (make that at least a dozen) tasty titbits I was really craving from Waitrose (I get along very well with Aldi on a day-to-day basis but there comes a time when somewhere with a little more selection is absolutely essential.)

Of course, I popped into most of the charity shops there. I did have to omit a visit to Oxfam - wickedly expensive anyway - and Barnardos, as my 'quick' trip to Argos to get a plug-in charger for my iPod (a fabulous gadget that I'm fast getting addicted to) turned into a v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w. wait - firstly to pay and then also to collect the charger from the pick-up point.  As the bus back from Billericay is only hourly I couldn't take the chance of missing it.

Anyhoo, I found a rather splendid lacy bolero-type knitted top for £3.00.  It is, unfortunately, brown - a colour both my sister and I are not too fond of as we had to wear a brown school uniform - but I think it will be useful in the spring / summer and I have a couple of tops it will go with quite nicely.

In the same charity shop was this lovely cotton paisley-print top.  There are tiny sequins all over the front of it, some of which are coming off but that doesn't really matter too much to my eyes.  This was also £3.00.  It's a long time since I spent the grand total of £6.00 in one charity shop but I know the tops would have cost a lot more than that originally so I was quite happy to cough up.

Best find of all though was this Band-Dai 'Super Badge It' machine.  I've been on the look-out for one for absolutely ages.  It seems to have all the relevant parts to make it work.  It was only £1.29 which I thought was a great bargain.  Trouble is the box is absolutely huge and I found it in the first charity shop I came to so I had to lug it all round Waitrose, banging into people no doubt, and then all round the rest of the High Street.  When I had a look on ebay I realised they go for really good money so I may end up listing it there instead of keeping it to mess about with myself.

*Fabulous line from Lily Allen's 'The Fear'.

I'ze is a Bit Higerant

I think I've mentioned before that I do a bit of book re-selling via Amazon.co.uk.  At one time I used to make a reasonable amount of money from doing this (approx. £50.00 per week on average), these days it's much harder to a) find a book that's not being sold for 1p, or b) to actually sell something even if it is worth listing.  Weeks go by and I may sell one or two books and that's all.  To add to my problems Amazon re-jigged their sellers' site last summer and it meant I could no longer access the names and addresses of where sold books had to be posted.  Undaunted, I would e-mail Mum and she would very kindly supply me with the details.  Then, after my computer disappeared in a puff of smoke, I discovered that I couldn't access any part of my seller account at all using P's computer - no re-listing of old books, no listing of new ones, nothing!! 

I knew Amazon had a seller's support help desk but kept putting off actually phoning them as I just knew their advice would be way too technical for me.  Eventually, this morning I bit the bullet and contacted them and they phoned me straight back.  The extremely helpful, and patient, American chap on the other end casually asked if I had Mozilla Firefox on the computer.  Why yes we do was my reply, wondering why he wanted to know if we had firewall protection.  I suggest you access the internet via Firefox he said.  Well, who'd-a thunk it!!  The icon I thought was something to do with a firewall, was actually another way of accessing the internet, and, guess what, I could access everything in my Amazon seller's account again.  I was so pleased, and a little dismayed at my technical ignorance!

A quick thank you to Catherine who sent me this lovely little parcel this morning after she won the Fair Isle knitting book giveaway.  A rather splendid selection of red buttons (after she'd read about my lack of red buttons the other day) and one of her little bags made from a gent's tie.  Thank you so much Catherine, I really appreciate it. 

Finds

A quick trip to the Post Office and Aldi this morning gave me (yet another) opportunity to have  a swift look-see in the charity shops.

Four knitting magazines were found in one charity shop - all from summer 2006 and all with one or two nice patterns in them.  50p each.

The second charity shop had five balls of some Emu wool (50p each) which is extra thick - double double - and which I'm hoping might be enough to knit myself one of these or something like it.  Again, Knitting Pattern Central have some fabulous free patterns for shrugs.

In the same shop were these two rather nice folk-art style napkins / placemats.  They're pure cotton and seem to be unused.  Not sure what I might do with them craft-wise, but the print is lovely, so for 25p each I thought I'd have them.

For anyone who has read 'The Tightwad Gazette', you might be interested in this up-to-date interview with Amy Dacyczyn.  As always, she has a lot of wise things to say about the current economic crisis. 

Pink

I've finally finished knitting the humungous wrap.  I do like the button I used but if I ever knitted this monster again, I sure as hell wouldn't bother with doing a buttonhole and button fastening.  The buttonhole was a total swine to do, ended up too big (I had to sew a bit of it together again), and is really in the wrong place for me.  That said, I'm really very pleased with how it has turned out and can envisage making use of it quite a lot on cooler spring (and probably summer) days. 

Here is a totally useless photo of me modelling it wearing my finest 'about the house' clobber.  By trying to avoid getting my face in the shot, I've managed to cover up the lovely button with the camera.  Also, please excuse the grubby mirror shot - it's an Edwardian wardrobe and the glass has gone rather misty with age (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!!)

I used this pattern to knit the wrap, which was free from  Knitting Pattern Central.  The button came from Get Knitted.

 

Blue

When DN was a lot smaller, and just learning to talk, whenever he was asked what colour something was he would reply that it was blue.  Even the question 'what colour is Mandma C's cat?', elicited the reply 'blue.'  He said this with such conviction that Mum and I were not entirely sure for ages that his other Grandma's cat (Mandma C) wasn't blue-ish in colour (possibly a light grey tabby or something else that a little one could confuse with blue.)  She isn't, of course.

I remembered this over the weekend when I decided to liven up a new plain navy-blue top I'd bought (shock, horror - yes I actually bought something that wasn't second-hand!!)  I had decided in my mind's eye that a nice grouping of bright red buttons would be just the thing, fondly imagining that I had some really stunning red buttons in my button box.  Sadly, my mind must have been playing tricks on me because when I emptied out the contents of the box all the red buttons I had were very boring.  I was just beginning to wonder what else I could do to liven up the top - a bit of embroidery or a felt flower applique - when I started to look at all the blue buttons I had.  I had so many to choose from that I didn't know where to start, which seems a bit odd as the red ones were so limited.  Never mind, the blue ones have livened up the top nicely.  Now all I need is a bit of warmer weather to wear it!