Making Good Use

Five Years / 1,000 Posts Goodie-Bag Giveaway

It was exactly five years ago today that I started this blog and, by sheer coincidence, this is also my 1,000th blog post.  So, to celebrate both these 'achievements' I thought I'd have a goodie-bag of items to giveaway.

A nice and summery lilac and white striped large pillowcase tote with a vintage crocheted piece on the front.

One of my handknitted 'knife, fork and spoon' cotton dishcloths.

A little zipped pouch I made ages ago and have never got round to doing anything with.

And one of my pure wool handknitted beanie hats with a vintage button brooch.  I know this is not really seasonal at the moment but if the miserable wet and windy weather continues you could probably get some use from it now, even though it is allegedly Spring!!

There'll probably be a couple of other items added to the goodie-bag as well - just not sure what they'll be as yet.  Just leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a name on Sunday 6th May.  I'm happy to post anywhere in the world so you're all most welcome to join in.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I had an unexpected and very pleasant two-day break in Winchester this week.  I did my degree at King Alfred's College in Winchester (now apparently re-named as The University of Winchester) and spent three very happy years living there.  I left KAC thirty years ago this summer and this is only the second time I've been back to Winchester since then.

The famous Winchester Cathedral (hands up all those of a certain age now humming the song 'Winchester Cathedral, you're getting me down'!!)  We would have liked to have a look inside but as they now charge £6.50 entry fee we thought we'd give it a miss.  I've been in many times in the past and my graduation ceremony was held here, so I didn't feel I was missing anything by not coughing up the money.

We spent an incredibly relaxing hour or two avoiding the rain in The Wykeham Arms, just round the corner from the cathedral.  I used to live across the road from this delightful pub and at one time it was my 'local.'

Winchester is full of history and exquisite old buildings.

It seems that round every corner there is a stunning building with a wealth of history.

The whole place is beautifully maintained - even the bollards are little works of art.

Plus, it has some fabulous shops.  I spent some considerable time perusing the wares in Cath K.

And also ventured into this lovely shop which was mentioned in this month's Mollie Makes.

There was a fair bit of shopping done but most of it of the birthday present variety.  I did, however, buy myself some Cath K bias binding and two rather nice brooches from The Hambledon - a pair of swallows and a weeny little poodle.

Mollie Makes Inspiration

I've read some negative comments about 'Mollie Makes' magazine on a few blogs lately, and whilst I do know what they mean about the 'twee' cover photos which always feature hands and that some of the articles can be a bit 'samey', nevertheless I tend to buy a copy every month.  Not everything featured in the magazine floats my boat - bit too much reliance on Japanese-style embroidery and amigurumi-type felted animals for my taste - but I usually find at least one thing that inspires me every month.

This month I was intrigued by the button fridge magnets they showed, especially as I have quite a large stash of vintage buttons and a pile of stick-on magnet strips.

Ta-dah, a quick sort through my buttons to find some without shanks and a bit of judicious snipping to size of the stick-on magnets and I've got enough button magnets to keep me going for a while.  I'm particularly liking the square brown button magnet and the little wooden one in the bottom left corner.

Allegedly it's Spring

Not that you'd know it from the weather this past week or so, today has been digustingly cold for April with heavy showers and a vicious easterly wind blowing.  I've got loads of salad-type recipes I want to try out from the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'Veg Every Day' book but tonight's evening meal was a good old warming plate of beef stew and mash - much more suitable for the weather, if not the season, than a plate of cold food. 

The simple fact though is that it is the middle of April (despite the weather being to the contrary) and my sewing thoughts have turned to making a few more summery pillowcase tote bags - with the hope that I can sell as many on eBay as I did last year.  I've only completed three so far but have got a few more vintage pillowcases washed and ironed and ready to be transformed into bags.

I've got a few of these bags myself and they get used every week when I do the major food shop on a Monday.  They are incredibly roomy and have held up very well to being stuffed to the gunnels with heavy tins, four-pint cartons of milk or huge quantities of fruit and veg.  I'm surprised myself how well the ones I've got have lasted and when they look a bit grubby they can easily be chucked in the washing machine to freshen them up - you can't do that with a plastic bag!!

Plus they fold up nice and small to fit into a handbag or a pocket, so I'm never without a cloth bag when I head out and about.  You never know when you're going to need a bag, especially now that some charity shops have started charging for their plastic bags (I do find that an awful cheek!!)

Henri, Le Chat Francais et son Ennui

Do check out this fabulous video - tres amusant.  Poor Henri, I know how he feels!!

PS - Have also found another Henri video -  'Je suis Henri' - here.

A Tiny Bit Zen

Quite astonishingly, I've single-handedly managed to drink a mega-large bottle of Disaronno in only four months!!  I was about to chuck the bottle into the glass recycling box when I realised it was actually rather a pleasing chunky shape.  After several hours soaking it in a bowl of water to remove the labels, it makes quite a nice stem vase.  With the addition of a small branch of what I think is Jews Mallow from the garden, it's now adding a tiny bit of Zen to our living room mantelpiece.

Liberty Letter Card

I never fail to be astounded by the cost of greetings cards in the shops.  Recently, I was looking for a Mothering Sunday card for my Mum in WH Smith's and the one I really liked was priced at £5.40 - gulp!!  Much as I love my Mum dearly I wasn't prepared to fork out that much for a card and settled for one that cost about £2.50 - and that was a very bog-standard sort of card even for that money. 

Last week it was my sister's birthday and I decided I'd try making her a card instead.  I'd left it a bit late so knew I couldn't go for anything too fancy or time-consuming to make and settled on the idea of something with her initial on it.

I found a little bit of some lovely Liberty tana lawn fabric I had, chose a typeface from Word, enlarged it to 400 pts and printed it out.  Then I simply cut round the 'S' shape, ironed some light interfacing to the back of the fabric and traced round the 'S' on the back of the fabric and cut it out.  I then attached it with double-sided tape to some of the lovely recycled card blanks I once got from The Makery (sadly, they don't seem to have them in stock any more.)  I was well pleased with how it turned out and all for a smidge over 50p.

Q.U.I.E.T.

We have had an incredibly quiet and relaxed Easter holiday.  The weather has been pretty dire which meant neither of us fancied our annual Easter Saturday trip to Southend (P to check out the chess tournament and me to check out the charity shops.)  If it was this cold in Wickford we both knew it would be an awful lot colder at the seaside so we decided to give it a miss this year.  I was hoping to get to the boot sale yesterday morning but there was just too much in the way of drizzle for it to have been worth going to, and today - when there should have been another boot sale - has been cold, wet and windy all day.  A total no-no where boot sales are concerned.

Still, all this enforced quiet time has given me a wonderful excuse to get on with reading this excellent book.

I'd picked up a copy of it in a charity shop months ago but had never got round to starting on it.  The trouble with me is I'm terrible for reading murder mystery / thriller type books almost exclusively and rarely venture away from that particular genre.  Anyway, when I was visiting Mum in Bristol recently she was reading it and said what a marvellous book it is.  She wasn't wrong there - I can barely put it down.  I don't think I've been quite so absorbed in a book since I read 'Brideshead Revisited' more than 30 years ago. 

'The Help' is brilliantly written and is very easy to read but the story it tells is shocking and thought-provoking all at the same time.  Here's the blurb from the back of the book '  Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver...  There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.  Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...'  It's a sobering thought for me that this way of life was still going on in my lifetime.  If you come across a copy of 'The Help' I can highly recommend it.

Phew!

We've had stage one of the digital TV switchover in our area today and when I put the telly on to watch the news this evening we had nothing but a 'no signal' message.  Cue frantic shouts to P to come and re-tune the ultra cheap digibox we've got, which we bought for £13.00 when Woolworths were closing down.  He fiddled and faffed around with it and eventually we had some of the channels up and running but none of the BBC ones.  I was not happy, as this evening is one of the few programmes I actually watch on TV - The Apprentice.   And we were both a little worried that our el-cheapo digibox was going to have to be consigned to the bin and we'd either have to make do with the five terrestrial channels again (Gawd, that would be a dire prospect,) or we'd have to go out and buy another box in order to get the other Freeview channels.

P took himself off to check out the digital switchover web page - which rather unhelpfully told us that our area is served by a transmitter in Kent which is not due to change to digital until June.  Um, no, don't think that's correct as we've had a very irritating message appear every time we switched the TV on for the past few weeks saying that the switchover was starting today.  I was exhorting P, in the strongest possible terms, to phone the helpline number and see what they had to say.  Obviously they only work office hours as by the time he tried there were only recorded messages.  Very bl**dy helpful to those of us desperate to get the BBC!!

Anyhoo, hats off to P, he's gone through the whole retuning process again and has got everything working A-OK.  What a hero!!  I'm off to watch The Apprentice in a mo with a nice cup of Rosie Lee and a couple of chocolate digestive biscuits.  And long may our ultra-cheap digibox keep on working.

A Rare Sight These Days

I was most surprised today to find a new item of clothing that has acutally been Made in England.  I came across a beautiful pure merino wool jumper for £2.50 in a local charity shop.  Two things caught my eye - 1) it still had its original labels attached, and 2) it bore the legend Made in England.   I just knew that if something is being manufactured in England in the 21st century it must be an item of clothing of extremely high quality.  Sure enough when I got home I checked out the John Smedley website and found that their jumpers retail at around the £130 mark.  Nice!!

It is so sad that we have pretty much destroyed our manufacturing industry in this country - especially the textile industry - and all for the sake of cheap, disposable fashion.  Pretty much any clothing I find that is vintage always has a label saying 'Made in England' or 'Made in Great Britain,'  occasionally for woolen items it will say 'Made in Scotland.'  I well remember Marks & Spencer having a huge sign in their window that boasted '90% of our goods are British made.'  Not any more they're not.  Anything new or new-ish from the past 20 years seems to have been made in Morocco, Turkey, Romania or Bangladesh (at least that's what a quick poll of the labels on my clothes say.)  I only have one item that was made in China (thank goodness) and that was a charity shop buy so I'm telling myself it doesn't really count.

I've been watching Mary Portas and her attempts to bring a tiny bit of textile manufacturing back to the UK with her 100% British knickers.  It has been a fascinating programme - in some ways very very uplifting and in others immensely sad.  I do hope she can keep her little factory ticking over and that her 'Kinky Knickers' keep on selling.