Making Good Use

The Tale of Three Ripe Bananas

Heather is running a Use It Up challenge for April which ties in very nicely with my 'tale of three ripe bananas.'

P takes an organic banana to work with him as part of his packed lunch every day.  Last week he came back one evening with three very ripe bananas which he hadn't got round to eating but which had all schlepped up and down to London with him in his briefcase.  I only really like eating bananas which are positively under-ripe - pretty much still green - so I knew I wouldn't ever eat them up.  The following afternoon I decided to make some Banana Bread with them.  It's a really easy recipe from 'The Complete Rose Elliot' cookbook but it does have to cook for an hour.  Now, I don't know whether there is something wrong with the oven, or the clock, or what, but after an hour what came out of the oven was pretty much charcoal.  I was not happy - feeling I'd now not only wasted three organic bananas but an egg, butter, sugar, flour, golden syrup etc etc.  I tried eating a slice but the burnt crust was just horrible.

Cut to the following afternoon when the burnt offering of the banana bread was still sitting on the kitchen side - taunting me - when I had a 'eureka' moment.  I hacked off all the burnt bits with the bread knife, sliced up what was left, soaked the non-burnt sponge slices in some sherry and arranged them around the sides of a large glass bowl.  Then I added a carton of custard to the middle of the bowl and chilled everything in the fridge.  Just before we were about to eat I added some chopped banana slices to the custard and, voila, we ended up with banana custard trifle.  With a large dollop of extra thick double cream it was totally delicious. 

So the 'tale of three ripe bananas' eventually had a happy ending.  Now, in the spirit of Heather's challenge, I'm wondering what to do with half a bowl of cold basmati rice.  Does anyone know if you can add rice to home-made soup to thicken it instead of potato?  Or are there any good rice soup recipes out there?

A Box of (Sewing) Delights

My lovely next-door neighbours are having a major sort out of their house because they've had a lift and a wet room installed.  The changes have become necessary as Mrs 'next-door neighbour' has got a degenerative condition which is making it more and more difficult for her to get about.  Without all the changes to their house they would have had to move, something they really didn't want to do as they've lived in that house for over 40 years.

Luckily for me when they decided that the large vintage sewing box had to go they asked me if I'd like to have it.  With no hesitation I said that I definitely would like it, yes please.

It's one of those extending sewing boxes so there is loads of space inside but it doesn't take up much room at all when it's closed.  Fully expanded it is so large that I suspect there must be a touch of the Tardis about it!!

Not only did they give me the box but all it's contents too - which include loads of sewing threads, embroidery cotton, bits of ribbon and bias binding, hooks and eyes, poppers, zips and loads of different buttons.

There were also two darning mushrooms which they were about to throw out as they thought I wouldn't want those - oh, but I did.

I'm really delighted with it all and now just have to think of something nice to get them by way of a huge thank you.

Gosh, I Haven't Seen One Of Those In Absolutely Ages

That is precisely what I thought when my eyes alighted on this little beauty in the Oxfam shop this morning.  I hardly dared look at the price, expecting it to be something truly horrendous (this being Oxfam an' all), amazingly it was only £2.99.  Definitely sold to the woman who has stupidly gone shopping without her faithful shopping trolley (why oh why I continue to do this I just don't know.  Whenever I am sans shopping trolley I always end up with masses of purchases.)

It is only a single size feather eiderdown but has a beautiful faded floral print all over it, with the faintest of polka dots just discernible as the background.

I remember buying loads of eiderdowns years ago at jumble sales.  It was in the days when duvets (or continental quilts as they were then known) had just become really fashionable and people were ditching their old-style bedding (sheets, blankets, candlewick bedspreads and eiderdowns) with gay abandon.  I always loved the faded paisely and floral patterns on the eiderdowns and would rush to buy them up at jumble sales.  Sadly, they were invariably sold on again when I needed a bit of ready cash.

I wouldn't want to go back to sleeping in a bed made up with sheets, blankets and eiderdowns, I think I'd find all that bedding much too heavy to sleep under.  I also have very vivid memories of being 'tucked in' by my Father when I was a small child and he used to pull everything so tight that I could hardly move at all in bed.  However, the old-fashioned bedding does have a wonderful faded nostalgic charm about it.

I actually bought the eiderdown with the idea of draping it over our rather dilapidated garden bench which, since I tidied up the garden, has been moved to a new spot at the top of the garden under a pergola-type structure which is very cool and shady in the summer.  (I am so keeping my fingers crossed that this year we do get some sort of summer!)

Maureen from New Zealand left a comment last week saying she had a Lloyd Loom chair which has been moved with her from one side of the world to the other, and how it has sat under many a tree in the summer.  That gave me the idea of shifting my Lloyd Loom chair out of the bedroom (where it is subsumed under piles of clothes) and into the garden next to the bench when the weather perks up a bit.  I thought the eiderdown would add a nice comfortable cover for the bench and would go nicely with the Lloyd Loom chair.  HOWEVER, I've just checked out what they sell for on ebay, and they seem to fetch very good money, so, once again, I fear a vintage eiderdown will not stay in my possession for very long.

Foxy

My Mum loves foxes, so I decided to make a little stuffie of one for her as something extra for Mother's Day.  I had been really organised and taken some photos of the finished article before I posted it off to her but, of course, the photos were lost when the computer had to be re-formatted.  Mum very kindly took some photos yesterday of Foxy enjoying himself in her garden.  As she is a much better photographer than I'll ever be the photos are much nicer than the ones I'd taken anyway.

I used this pattern for a racoon from this month's Sew Hip magazine as the basis for Foxy.  Although I think his ears could have done to be a bit bigger - more fox-like and less racoon-like.  I also went for the easy option of sewing him by hand using felt.

A Bit of a Hiccup

Disaster struck on Sunday evening when the other computer in the house developed some very nasty corruption and stopped working!  Quelle horreur - a computer-less household.  P did his damndest to get it working again but no luck, so yesterday I was ringing round to find someone to come and fix it.  After a fair bit of trouble to find someone, this morning a very nice chap came from Basildon and spent over three hours reloading everything back on to the computer (not Finepix as yet though so no photos at the moment).  He's not sure that the problem isn't linked to the hard-drive (which apparently only have a life of 3 - 5 years - and this computer is over 5 years old) but for the time being all is working again.  He also had a look at my computer (which went 'bang' with a vengeance a few weeks ago) and found it was working fine.  He thought that the problem might have been caused by, ahem, excessive dust in the works.  Judging by the amount of dust in the back of the base unit I think he may have been right.  Obviously need to up my cleaning and dusting regime a bit!!  For all that time and effort he only charged us £25, which I thought was extremely cheap.

I went to the car boot sale again on Sunday as it was such lovely weather.  I didn't get much but did come home with a lovely double duvet cover for £1.00, which when I examined it was a Designers Guild one and these seem to retail new for a lot of money.  I was really pleased with that and also with the travel-size Body Shop shampoo and conditioner which I got for 20p each.  My sister, DN and I are off to Legoland for a few days at the beginning of April so they will come in very useful then.

After the car boot, we called in at the farm shop which is just across the road.  My goodness me that is a cheap place to shop.  Amongst other things I came away with a bag of six Jaffa grapefruits for £1.00, two packs of organic biscuits for £1.00 (and very tasty they are too), a huge bottle of Shloer white grape and mango juice - £1.00, three Boursin cheeses - £1.00, and a luxury Christmas pudding for £1.00 (I thought it would make a nice pudding on Easter Sunday).  The shop was packed, despite it being Mothering Sunday, but judging by the amazing prices I'm not surpried. I think I'll certainly be going there again.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a few photos too.

Oldest Thrifted Item

I've just spent another hour in the garden armed with my trusty secateurs (although a machete would be more appropriate in some spots) having another good session of hacking, chopping and cutting my way through the worst of the overgrown undergrowth.  Whilst out there I started thinking about the car boot sale on Sunday, and whether we'd be going this week, which led me on to thinking about thrifted items in general, and how long I've had some of them.  Eventually I ended up with thinking about what was the oldest thrifted item I still have.

I don't think there's any contest really - it has to be the Lloyd Loom type laundry basket which I've had for 25 years and which is still used every single day.  Picked up at a jumble sale in Bath a quarter of a century ago (wow - that's scary!!) this has moved with me from Bath to Bristol, Bristol to Nottingham, back to Bristol, several different addresses in Bristol, on to Billericay and now to our present house.

It was always a bit 'askew' and was originally a sort of 'boudoir' pink colour.  I should probably have left it alone but at some point I decided to paint it gloss black, probably not the best decision I ever made but there we go.  I can't remember what I paid for it but I suspect it was about 50p, which works out at some infinitessimally small 'cost per use'.  I can't imagine ever getting rid of it, it still seems as sturdy as the day I lugged it home from the jumble.  Perhaps at some point it could do with smartening up a bit but I can't imagine how many coats of paint it would take to cover the black gloss!!  I'll probably just leave it as it is. 

Close runner up to the laundry basket is a large grey and white enamel baking tray which I've probably had for close on 20 years - also originally from a jumble sale.  I would have taken a photo of that too but it's being used at the moment in the oven to cook our evening meal.

What's the oldest thrifted item you still have?

Sunshine on a Stick

Perhaps more accurately I should say sunshine on a twig.  This is the view of the forsythia from the back bedroom window in all its sunshine-yellow glory.  It does make a lovely sight and is that zingy ultra-bright yellow that just has to lift your spirits when you see it.

Here in Essex the glorious sunshine of the past few days has vanished since lunchtime and has been replaced by leaden grey skies and a bitingly cold easterly wind.  Ah b*gger it, and I really thought Spring had come to stay.

Online Selling

Is it a sign of the times that this year's adult learning courses in our area are offering a 'buying and selling on-line' three-week course (2 hours a week for 3 weeks)?  I would imagine that trying to make a bit of extra money selling online, or trying to find a few bargains by buying second-hand online would be very very popular at the moment.  I'm not sure whether the fact that ebay have now removed listing fees for all auction items starting at 99p or less is a sign that they are doing very well or are desperately trying to encourage more people to take up online selling.

I've been selling on ebay for more than six years now and oddly enough have had some of my best sales since the New Year.  Just before Christmas (usually a bonanza time), I was very disappointed with some of the sales I had.  Things just weren't fetching the sort of prices they had in previous years in the run-up to Christmas and I was really fearing that the recession had meant even second-hand sales were beginning to suffer.  Luckily, since then things have definitely improved and I've had some great sales - like the Marks and Spencer king-size cotton duvet cover which I paid £1.00 for and which sold for £33.00, or the vintage child's Holly Hobby apron which I also picked up for £1.00 and which went on to sell for £24.00.  Of course, there have been plenty of things which have either failed to sell or have only fetched the initial 99p or not much more, and which in hindsight I wish I'd never bothered to list.

I just keep listing away - usually for 10 day listing-periods - every Thursday afternoon in the hope that things will keep on selling despite the recession.  At the moment I've been having a good look through my summer wardrobe and have decided that a lot of my T-shirts just aren't really long enough so a lot of those will be getting listed in the next few weeks - many of them have only been worn a couple of times and are in really good condition.  The question is why did I buy them in the first place as I certainly haven't grown in height in the last year or so - around possibly, upwards definitely not.

How has your ebay trading been lately?  Have you noticed any great changes - for good or bad?  I'd love to know how others are getting on.

The Best Laid Plans ....

I'd had such big plans for these past six days when I was here all by myself.  I was going to be cutting out and sewing up loads of pillowcase bags, possibly even making some slightly more sophisticated bags, maybe even venturing a bit further afield and sewing up some summery cushion covers.  Oh yes, the plans were endless.  I'd have so much more time what with only having to cater for myself and then there was that whole empty weekend for me to be really creative in.  Yeah, right!!  None of my best laid plans came to fruition!

I partly blame the lovely weather which saw me being out and about a lot more than I'd planned on being.  I mean, no way was I going to turn down the chance of going with my next-door neighbours to the first car boot of the season.  Then there was the copious amounts of washing to be done - because you just never know when this lovely weather might disappear.  Then there was taking advantage of it being nice and dry and so getting the grass cut for the first time, which led on to yet another 'tidy up' of bits of the garden yesterday afternoon.

In my defence, m'lud, I did spend a fair chunk of both Friday and Saturday afternoon hand-stitching a little something for Mother's Day (photos to follow next week when said item has been received by my Mum), and I did manage to knit yet another waffle dishcloth in the evenings.

However, the most useful thing I did in the whole six days was this morning when I finally got round to gluing the world's most irritating castors back on to the bathroom trolley.  That damn trolley has been one of the very few Ikea items I've bought that I've not been best pleased with.  From the start the castors had the most annoying habit of falling off whenever you so much as looked at the darn thing.  I would have ditched it years ago but we don't have any storage to speak of in our bathroom - including no toilet-roll holder - so we've had to continue using it no matter how annoying it has been.  We've only had it for about 12 years so it didn't take me too long to get round to fixing it!!

Firsts

A whole load of 'firsts' took place these past couple of days.

The first car boot sale of the season - unbelievably early as last year my first car boot was at the beginning of May.  A surprising number of sellers, although a lot of them were traders, and a whole lot of eager buyers.  I didn't come away with anything wonderful - some nice toiletries @ 50p each and a 20p Spiderman T-shirt for DN - but it was just fantastic to be tramping round a car boot sale once again.  Boy, have I missed the thrill of a car boot sale on a Sunday morning over the winter.

The first time the back door has been propped open and left that way for a few hours since sometime last autumn.  It's so nice to feel the house filling up with fresh air once again.  Yesterday the door stayed wide open until it got dusk when it seemed the temperature plummeted and I had to shut the door and put on the heating again.

The first grass cut of the season this morning, prompted by the whine of electric lawnmowers from all directions yesterday afternoon.  It was surprisingly easy to cut (I always dread the first cut of the year as it can be murder to get the mower through longish wet grass) and I really quite enjoyed being out in the garden with the mower again.  The grass always looks so nice when it has just been cut - although, sadly, that effect never lasts very long.

The first time I've ever seen a knitted clock cosy!!  These were featured in Saturday's Telegraph magazine.  Slightly mad but also very covetable.