Making Good Use

Cornishware Colour Cornish Wool

My very clever Mum spotted two hanks of organic Cornish wool for 50p in a charity shop recently and very kindly sent them on to me.  Oddly enough, I bought a hank of cream organic Cornish wool at the Country Living Fair last year (I'm pretty sure I paid £9.95 for it - oh, the lure of reckless spending on a 'day out'.)  The cream and blue colours together remind me very much of the wonderful T G Green Cornishware and I think I'll use those colours to make a Cornishware inspired tea cosy.  I believe that Cornishware also used to be available in yellow and white stripes too - although I'm not sure the yellow was quite as 'egg yolk' as the yellow Mum found.  Anyway, well spotted Mum, and thanks for sending it on to me.

I had another parcel arrive this morning with some very nice red cotton fabric in (the fabric in the background of the photos).  Ffion got in touch last week and asked if I could make use of the material  - it's such a wonerfully vibrant colour that I know it will get used.   Thank you very much Ffion, it was lovely of you to think of me.

Thanks very much too for the comments left re: my radio interview.  I think it went alright, at least I didn't say anything unbelievably stupid (well, I don't think I did!).  I was so nervous beforehand but as soon as I actually started talking it was fine and it was certainly an unusual experience for a Friday morning.

I did my usual visit to the 'Coffee and Jumble' this morning and found this rather nice Bodum wooden pepper grinder for 50p.  Now, I don't actually 'need' another pepper grinder but this one is very tactile and very solid - I wasn't sure at first if it was a door stop!!  So I undid the screw at the bottom and out clattered lots of pepper corns, after that I thought I had better buy it anyway.  This one will stay in the kitchen so that I can add seasoning whilst I'm cooking which will save me from having to keep fetching the other one from the dining room - lazy or what?

Thrift is the New Rich*

If anybody has found their way to my blog via the interview this morning on BBC Radio Essex - hi, and I hope you can find something useful for you here.

There are loads of thrifty blogs out there and here are a list of the best one's I've come across - these people can really inspire anyone to be thrifty.

www.catzscorner.blogspot.com - another thrifty Essex person.

www.notesfromthefrugaltrenches.com - a very inspirational twenty-something's down-shifting journey

www.reactivecooking.com - does exactly what it says on the tag line - 'don't bin it, cook it.'  Great inspirational recipes for using up left-over food.

www.down---to---earth.blogspot.com - probably THE best down-shifting / simplicity blog out there.  Full of wonderful ideas and tips.

www.apronthriftgirl.typepad.com - wonderfully inspirational thrifting from the US.  *And the author of the line 'Thrift is the New Rich' - how very true that is.

And, finally, if you want some fabulous tips on saving money try and get hold of the book 'The Complete Tightwad Gazette' by Amy Dacyczyn - a truly life-changing and inspirational book.

Heard But Not Seen (Thank Goodness!)

There were a couple of nice finds in Billericay this morning.  The little china Matryoshka doll is a new item from the Marie Curie Cancer Care shop - they had different sizes and different colour-ways and for £2.00 I thought she was rather nice.  I also saw some lovely Matryoshka Christmas cards in the Barnardos shop, and I might buy those next time I go there.  I also found a lovely vintage M&S apron which is pure cotton and the most fabulous 1970s folk-art print - I'm not sure whether to take a punt at selling it on ebay, or whether to just cut it up and use the fabric for something else (sadly, said apron is not, ahem, generously enough cut to fit me!)

Also, if anyone is local and is tuned in to BBC Radio Essex tomorrow morning about 11.10 am, they might just hear me being interviewed by Dave Monk about thrifty living.  I'm very nervous about it all, and will feel mighty relieved when it's over.  Still, it will be an experience, and at least no one will be able to see me!!  (Makes me think of the bit from 'Educating Rita' - "How would you overcome the difficulties in staging Ibsen's Hedda Gabler?"  "Put it on the radio.")

I Don't Know Where the Day Went

It's true, I don't know where today has gone.  I had every intention of heading to Billericay this morning but an urgent request from my next door neighbours to look up and print off a few things for them from the internet meant I had to put that plan on hold.  I really don't mind as there's always tomorrow and my lovely neighbours have been so good to me recently that I'm only too happy to help them out whenever I can.

Then I found I'd sold four (amazing, I've never sold that many in one day before!!) books on Greenmetropolis which meant a fair amount of time was taken up with searching out the relevant books in the boxes and piles of piles where the Greenmetropolis books are stored.  Then I had to wrap them up - wrapping up things always seems to take me MUCH LONGER than I ever anticipate!

Then this afternoon I decided to make a beef stew - I like making stew and I love eating it at the moment - but it does seem to require lots of popping to and fro to the kitchen to keep an eye on things, chop things and generally faff about.

I also sold one of my hand knitted hats on ebay which meant more wrapping - even more carefully this time as I like to really make an effort when I've sold something handmade.  I also listed a couple more handmade items for sale on ebay.

Finally, I got my first YouGov survey to complete.  A lot of it was whether I thought positively or negatively about certain brands (S, you'll be pleased to know Ernest Jones was amongst them and I certainly said I felt VERY negative about them!)  The last few questions were what I felt about Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling et al and their handling of the economic crisis - boy, it felt good to be able to voice my opinions about that!!

I Salvaged What I Could

And ended up with a rather useful autumn-themed bag.  Sadly, the iron mould was rather more widespread than I'd realised (and Ace bleach didn't touch it), but never mind at least I could squeeze one bag out of the tablecloth.  I've got an idea of using some of the iron-mould-free offcuts on some greetings cards but as this fabric does tend to fray a tad I'm not sure whether the idea will work or not, I'll see.

Now, That's What I Call A Timely Find

I found this book for 50p in one of the local charity shops on Saturday morning and, with the mounting economic problems in the Western world, it seemed only prudent to buy it. 

I remember hearing a lot about this book when I was a young teenager (sure enough, it was originally published in 1972), when it seemed to me it was a weighty-looking tome with lots of scientific-type illustrations.  Not the sort of book that appealed to me at the time - in fact, I tended to associate it with the hard-core hippy 'knit your own lentils' brigade.  Now it really appeals to my frugal nature and I'm hoping to get a lot of use from it.  It does help that the illustrations have now been replaced by nice bright colour photographs.

Every autumn I think I'd like to go out to the countryside and pick mushrooms - again, every autumn the Daily Moan (sorry, Daily Mail) carries hysterical articles about what happens if you pick and eat the wrong fungi - kidney failure at best, death otherwise!!  This does tend to put me off a bit.  There is a whole section of 'Food for Free' dedicated just to fungi - with helpful photos.  I'm still not sure I'd ever dare risk it, but I do feel a bit more capable now I've got this book.

There are also some helpful recipes in the book so that you know what to actually do with your free harvest, and some quite obscure ones too - Pontack Sauce (made from elderberries) and Chinese-style Jew's ear soup (for clarity, Jew's ear is apparently a type of fungi!!)  I do feel prompted to go down the lane and see what's left of the blackberries - they'd make a nice free pudding this evening - and at least eating a dodgy blackberry can't kill me!!

It's Been Ages

Since I went down to Basildon.  I always try and go on a Friday morning so that I can combine any shopping I need with a trip to the 'Bargain Box' as well as the charity shops.

I'd be ashamed to mention quite how much I spent on three new winter tops, all I can say is it's a good job I had a gift card for this particular shop, and that I buy most of my clothes seond-hand.  How people can afford to dress totally from high street stores is waaaaaaaay beyond me and my budget.  I've just spent a very pleasant hour trying the new tops on at home with various pairs of jeans, and having a good go through my wardrobe to see what else I can resurrect for the winter.  I did manage to find two tops which I thought didn't fit any more but which seem to be fine - a bit of a mystery that as I swear I haven't lost any weight but, hey ho, I'm not complaining.  I also managed to find a couple of items that I'll be putting on ebay - just to try and recoup some of the expenditure of this morning.

I did a quick tour of all the charity shops and came away with a few books for re-sale.  Then it was off double-quick to the 'Bargain Box'.  They say they are open from 10.00 - 12 noon, but by 11.15 they were already beginning to pack up. 

I managed to find a rather nice autumnal tablecloth, I just love the leaf print but, sadly, it seems to have succumbed to a bad case of iron mould in places.  I will wash it through with a good dose of Ace bleach but I'm not sure it will have much effect.  If anyone has any suggestions about what to do with tablecloth-weight material I'd love to hear from you.

Also picked up were these two full cards of vintage buttons.  They're not wildly exciting but as they and the tablecloth were only 50p in total, I thought I'd give them a good home.

It May Not Be Right Pretty

But the pipe wrap draught excluder at the bottom of the french windows does seem to be having a good effect.  I had to cut extra pieces in order to fit the width of the windows and the bolt near the middle also proved a bit tricky to work around.  Aesthetically, it could definitely be improved.  Technically, I'm still not sure how long the parcel tape currently holding the pipe wrap to the floor and door will last - but for the time being it is a vast improvement.  The draught was so bad that when I was kneeling down fitting the pipe wrap the wind whistling through the gap was so fierce it was blowing my hair about!!

Here's something that is 'right pretty' - my better-late-than-never geranium.  I bought two of these a couple of months ago in the market when they were first in flower.  A couple of weeks later and the flowers had died back and all that was left were leaves - not very pretty.  I kept on watering them but did nothing else and was most surprised when I got back from Bristol last week to find this one in particular had more flowers than when I originally bought it.  Long may it last, bringing a touch of summer to the wind-lashed, rain-splashed autumnal garden