Making Good Use

Unearthing Handmade 'Stuff'

One of the drawers (can I just take a moment here to say how irritated I am at seeing the word 'drawer' mis-spelt as 'draw' - I saw it twice on TV yesterday alone!!  Sorry, bit of a rant there but it DOES annoy me a tad)  under the bed contains most of my handmade 'stuff' that I hope to sell at some point or another.  I haven't really investigated this drawer fully in the two years since we bought the new bed.  Hmm, yes, well, quite a few handmade objects came to light - not only 'stuff' I forgot I owned but 'stuff' I'd even forgotten I'd made, and that's a bit worrying.

 
First out of the gloom were a set of four pure cotton lilac-coloured napkins that I gussied up with a knife, fork and spoon embroidery a couple of years ago.  I was really pleased with how the embroidery turned out but knew I'd never have the guts to use them myself for fear of getting food on them (I'm a notoriously messy eater!). 

 
Then several handknitted beanie hats were found squashed up at the back of the drawer.   They were all knitted with a view to, hopefully, selling them but they're not going to sell whilst jammed under the bed.

 
 

Although I'm quite taken with the purple and grey striped one (isn't there a poem that says 'when I get old I'm going to wear purple'  Well, I must now be officially old as I've got quite a few purple items in my wardrobe,) I've got more than enough knitted hats to keep me going for many winters to come.

 
So I've rescued them all from the drawer - plus quite a few other items that are now destined for the charity shop - and as soon as ebay have another of their free-listing weekends I'm going to list this lot and hope someone fancies buying a handmade / handknitted item for Christmas.

The Song That Stuck in My Mind, and the Wonders of YouTube

I've recently come across several people travelling to / having just come back from Bali, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I'd heard a song called 'I've Been to Bali Too.'  I couldn't remember who had sung it - although I did remember they were Australian. 

Thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, I found the song and it was by a group called Redgum.  I would never in a million years have remembered their name - although the song had stuck in my memory for nigh on 30 years.  I had no idea how big Redgum seemed to have been back in the day in their native Australia - nor how political they had been - but I know I saw them twice whilst I was at college in Winchester in the early eighties.  I think they played in a pub garden  - which seems a bit of a comedown compared to some of the huge crowds they were playing for in the videos on YouTube - albeit a rather large pub garden if my memory serves me well.  They were fabulous and I bought a tape of their songs - I haven't set eyes on that for many years (wonder what happened to it?)

I've had great fun going through all the Redgum songs on YouTube and remember many of them very well, including a lot of the lyrics.  I'm going see if I can download some of the songs onto my iPod as they are definitely tracks I want to listen to again and again.  One of their songs in particular seems most appropriate for this Armistice Day, I Was Only 19.  It may be about the Vietnam War but the words are still relevant today.

Unearthing Yet More 'Stuff'

P had to go up in the loft yesterday evening to check out the water tanks as the central heating was clonking and banging quite alarmingly.  (He managed to sort out the problem then but today we're back to clonking and banging and I've turned the heating off as I'm a total wuss and am afraid everything is about to explode!!  So that'll be P back up in the loft again this evening - he will be pleased!!)  Anyhoo, whilst he was up there I asked him to try and locate a large cake tin which contains all the attachments for an unused food processor I've got.  I'd like to sell the blommin' thing as it will free up a lot more cupboard space but will have to find the attachments first.  He didn't find that particular tin but did unearth another one that I'd totally forgotten I owned.

 

I'm pretty sure I bought this in Hay-on-Wye ten or so years ago.  It was always in a rather battered state but I really liked it because my Grandma used to be a secretary at Carsons Chocolate Factory in the 1920s.  The factory used to stand amongst open fields, but was very conveniently located near to Mangotsfield Railway Station (and, according to Wikipedia, had it's own siding which saw chocolate trains until the early 1960s - I never knew that!!) 

 

Another interesting fact about Mangotsfield station is that Arnold Ridley (Godfrey in 'Dad's Army') wrote his play 'The Ghost Train' based on being stranded at the station overnight.  I did know that interesting snippet, but it's nice to see it confirmed by Wikipedia too.

I vividly remember going by train to Bath from this station when I was little, and I also remember me and my family going to watch the last train run on that line after it was axed by Dr Beeching.  Sadly, the station and Carsons Chocolate Factory are both now long gone but I'm going to find somewhere to display this tin to remind me of bygone times.

PS  Maureen, I'm dedicating this post to you as I know you have fond memories of Mangotsfield too.

PPS Tomorrow I'll show you what I've just unearthed from a drawer - yet more 'stuff' I'd forgotten I had!!

Gearing Up

Back home again after a lovely relaxing week with my Mum in Bristol (thank you, Mum, it was just what I needed) and now I need to start gearing up for Christmas.  I've got a lot of nice items to list on ebay this week (just hoping for some nice sunny weather to get the best photos - today is VERY grey and overcast) and then on Friday is the annual Christmas Fair at the town-centre church.  I always enjoy going to that and there are usually some excellent bargains to be had, plus some rather nice home-made jams.  I'll be seeing if I can find some Lego sets for my nephew again this year and also stocking up (again!) on nice toiletries for myself.  Plus, I'm hoping there'll be a few nice bits and bobs suitable for re-selling.

I've made a reasonable start on handmade Christmas presents having finished two quite a while ago (I'm rather pleased with how both have turned out but can't show them on the blog otherwise it will spoil the surprise,) but I've got a few more to make as well.  I also made a start on buying a couple of presents yesterday, which is quite early for me. 

It seems impossible that it's the second week of November already (where did this year go?) and I'm finding the 'countdown to Christmas' button that's recently appeared on ebay rather alarming as every day it tells me how little time I've got left to get my a*se in gear!!

Bristol Bargains

Despite the drizzle yesterday morning, Mum and I decided to pop down to Church Road in Redfield (an eastern suburb of Bristol) to check out the charity shops and to have a spot of lunch at Grounded. 

 

We both struck quite lucky in the charity shops with Mum finding a gorgeous National Trust blue and white cat plate and me finding a rather spiffy Evans jumper with heart-shaped embroidery for myself (a very welcome addition to my winter wardrobe) and an Ikea / Cath Kidston Rosali very large cushion cover / pillowcase to sell on eBay.  I was delighted to find the Rosali cover as I know they're good sellers and this one only cost me 50p.  I was also quite proud of myself for having spotted it in a very jumbled basket of old linens - I did have a really good root through the basket after having found it but, sadly, couldn't find it's mate, or any other Rosali items.

Lunch was tres delicious - goats cheese with red onion chutney on a bed of rocket followed by sticky toffee pudding for me and a mahoosive piece of carrot cake for Mum.  It was a lovely little trip out and even the drizzle stopped pretty much as soon as we got there.

Unearthed

Because we've been going to the local farm shop a lot more regularly lately, and buying rather a lot of the Biona organic products they've had on offer, we've begun to seriously run out of storage space.  I've got a large cupboard in the hall that not only stores all the table linens and kitchen towels, but has also been a very useful storage area for the overspill of tins and jars from the kitchen shelves too.  Lately, due mainly to our bulk buying at the farm shop, that cupboard has become more and more crowded.  I knew eventually I'd have to bite the bullet and try and sort things out a bit and this past weekend seemed as good a time as any to do that.

Inside said cupboard was a never-been-used-or-even-taken-out-of-its-wrapping electric steamer which I won years and years ago - probably when I was still living in Bristol.  If I hadn't used it in all that time I felt the likelihood was that I was never ever going to use it (I've got a perfectly serviceable, if slightly ancient, steamer saucepan.)  So I decided to send that to the charity shop - with a note on it explaining what it was and the fact that it had never been used.  That freed up some very valuable storage space.

Flushed with my success in the hall cupboard, I moved on to the sideboard - another repository for all sorts of unused cr*p!!  In there I found quite a few bits and pieces of vintage china that I'd had stored away for years - most of it was also delivered to the charity shop this morning.  However, amongst the clutter I unearthed a set of four rather nice small dinner plates.

 
These have been washed up and taken into use - and I couldn't have found them at a more convenient time as I've had a few breakages lately and a lot of our china is quite badly chipped now.  I refuse to buy anything decent and / or new until we are FINALLY living in our own house so these are not only rather nice to look at (Stardust pattern by Barker Bros.) but darned useful too.  I wonder what else I've squirreled away somewhere and forgotten about ?  I foresee a major unearthing session going on next week when I get back home from visiting Bristol.