Making Good Use

It Was A Bit Like The Curate's Egg*

I'm on the look out for some cotton short-sleeved work shirts for my partner and, having discovered the SHOCKING prices M&S are charging, I'm giving the charity shops a more detailed than usual perusal.  Sadly, nothing suitable was found in the way of shirts, but I did have a couple of great finds today.

DN is currently into dressing up, so I was really chuffed to find him this brand new dinosaur dress up kit from the Early Learning Centre.

The £10 price tag is the original cost, I only paid £2.50.  I'm not sure if DN will wear this as he always has to be the 'hero' of the piece, but perhaps mummy will have to wear it and then he can pretend she is a Dr Who alien!

My other great find of the day was in a charity shop which I rarely bother with as their prices are a tad too high for my liking.  However, leaving no stone unturned in my hunt for a shirt I ventured in there and lo and behold this little beauty was hanging up. 

It's a really large square tablecloth in red and white polka dots with these fantastic mushrooms and toad stools all over it.  If I had a square dining table I'd be tempted to use it as is, but my table is round so it is destined to become something else, not sure what as yet but it'll have to be something special as I really love this fabric.

* Good in parts.

In England's Green and Pleasant Land

Another bank holiday, another deluge - this time accompanied by what feels like sub-zero temperatures compared to last week's sun.  On the positive side this means the garden is now lush and verdant.

This is the view from the spare bedroom window (where the computer is).  Yes, there is a shed under that mass of ivy and roses!! I've already had a go with the secateurs this spring but feel a MAJOR pruning session coming on whenever the weather dries up.

Thank goodness I got my act together and cut the grass last week, otherwise I would have had to take a scythe to it after all this rain.  Even the trees seem to be growing like Topsy.

On the negative side, the downpours mean no car boot sales either today or tomorrow - phooey!  But that did mean that P and I had an opportunity to go to the Sunday T'ai Chi class.  We've been learning Taoist T'ai Chi for the past two years but in all that time we have never managed to drag ourselves to the Sunday morning class.  It made a really nice change to do some gentle exercise but I can't see it becoming a permanent fixture for me until October when the car boot sales stop for the winter.  Unless, of course, this diabolical weather continues in which case my Ta'i Chi will improve no end!

The Long and The Short of It

I'm pretty tall for a woman - approx. 5 ft 10 inches, and am 'well-built' with it.  I particularly like tops to cover my tum and bum so am constantly on the look out for longer length tops, not an easy task. 

Last summer I found a nice sleeveless top in a charity shop but when I got it home I found it was quite a few inches too short to wear with trousers.  Now, as it already had lace edging to the neckline and the armholes I thought why not add a panel of lace at the bottom to make the top long enough. So I duly bought some lace and after adding it to the bottom of the top I was well pleased with the results.

I recently bought myself a cheapo (£5) black cotton sleeveless vest top which sadly was also a tad too short for my liking.  So this time I added some black broderie anglais fabric to the bottom to lengthen it.  I'm pretty pleased with the outcome - even if the broderie anglais cost nearly as much as the top!!

I had just enough left over to make a matching corsage which I've trimmed with a white vintage button from my collection.

I've got one more 'lengthening' to do.  This is another cotton sleeveless top in a really nice shade of green.  I got this one last autumn for £3.00 in a sale.  The lace I'm going to use was also in a sale and I think cost about £1.50. 

The only snag is I'm going to have to add two layers of lace to the hem to make the top long enough which could prove to be quite a lengthy (boom, boom) process as I sew these things by hand!

Read All About It

We very very rarely buy a newspaper but always have loads of them to read.  How?  Well, my partner commutes into the City each weekday and picks up some of the papers other commuters have already read and have left on the train.  This was yesterday's haul.

As you can see we go from high brow to, ahem, 'popular' ,with the free Lite evening paper for good measure.  I also pick up a free Essex paper each Thursday which gives us the TV listings for the week and we have two other free local papers delivered to the door each week as well. 

I really like the idea of leaving something you have read for other's to enjoy. Nobody polices this practice, it just seems to have organically grown all by itself, and I for one am really delighted by this.  It's a pity we can't extend it to other things - for instance magazines.  It would be great if there was somewhere in a local library where you could leave recent magazines you have already read and could then swap them for another which someone else has read but you haven't. 

I remember many years ago when I was in California they had a wonderful system in supermarkets where people would leave coupons they didn't need in a box near the door and could then help themselves to any coupons that were relevant to them.

But why stop at paper goods.  I've read that in some towns in America they have a couple of days a year where householders put out large items they no longer need (furniture, shelving that sort of thing) on the pavement and it is free for the taking by anyone who can make use of it. That seems a really good idea to me as it means these large items no longer end up in landfill, people get to pick up things they need for free, plus the householder can rid themselves of any large items quickly and easily - without having to pay the council to take it away.

I know Freecycle does a similar sort of thing via the net, and even though I live in a small town we have a Freecycle page all to ourselves - which is excellent.  Sadly, I've always been just too late to nab any of the bargains on offer in my area, and I'm not really into second-hand exercise bikes or war novels, which always seem to be available!!

Cotton Wash Cloths

Having sold a couple of my cotton dish cloths on etsy - thank you Lesley from Dallas for your purchase, I've been inspired to have a go at knitting some face cloths using Blue Sky Organic Cotton.  This is the most beautiful yarn to work with, soft and tactile, and it washes and wears incredibly well.  I treated myself to a couple of balls of this yarn when I went to Loop in Islington, after I had been to the Country Living Fair in March.

The colours are limited to those which naturally occur in the growing process so the yarn is particularly pure, having not been bleached or dyed at all.  This makes it an ideal yarn for sensitive skins - hence the face cloths.  I made a very simple one a couple of months ago for my partner, who has a tendency to suffer from eczema.  He reported that it was wonderfully soft on his skin, and I can report that it has washed and worn very well.

I wanted to have a go at designing a pattern and thought a pair of lips would be appropriate for a face cloth.

I'm not sure this has been entirely successful - a bit too much like Mick Jagger's lips for my liking, but after many many attempts I'm going to say this is as good as it gets. 

The stripy face cloth in the top picture is my favourite and was a happy accident when I found that I didn't have enough of the paler shade to make a whole flannel, so I decided to make it stripy like the traditional face cloths I remember from my childhood.  They are both up for sale in my etsy shop.

Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon

I can't believe the difference 24 hours can make to the weather.  Yesterday was cold, grey and very wet.  Today we have clear blue skies, sunshine and the temperature must be about 22 degrees.  Perfect weather for an afternoon of light crafting in the sun.

Some knitting in the most gorgeous Blue Sky Organic Cotton, more on that tomorrow.  Some cutting out of cute animal shapes in fabric - to be made into postcards.  Some good music on my headphones - Fat Boy Slim, The Stranglers, Calexico and Fun Lovin' Criminals.  And a nice cool drink.  Bliss!! Of course, what I should have been doing was cutting the grass and some major weeding, maybe tomorrow!

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce

RECYCLE - Today is rubbish and recycling collection day in my little corner of Essex.  We have a very odd system (well, to my mind anyway) in that there are no wheelie bins!!  This came as a huge shock to me when I first lived in Essex as I had been used to a wheelie bin for the previous 10 years!!  I spent some considerable time on the phone to the local council bemoaning the lack of wheelie bins, and how environmentally unfriendly it was for them to only provide black sacks.  Due to the huge EU fines which every council will face soon if they don't up their recycling quotas, wheelie bins (at least for garden waste) are now on the agenda for the next finanial year - hallelujah!!

This is our rubbish and recycling awaiting collection this morning

The black sack contains all our non-recyclable rubbish for two weeks (no, we aren't on the dreaded fortnightly collection as yet, my dear partner forgot to put the rubbish out last week when I was away).  The two pink sacks contain recyclable newspaper, cardboard, plastic and cans, and that is two weeks worth as they only collect the recycling on alternate weeks.  The biggest, orangest box you ever did see is for glass ONLY!!  Ours contains about 6 - 8 weeks of glass, most people put theirs out every fortnight and I have been somewhat shocked by the huge quantities of beer and wine bottles my neighbours recycle!! 

We didn't have any garden waste this past fortnight so there were none of the 'very special' biodegradable white garden waste sacks put out.  I hate these sacks with a loathing!!  On yet another rant to the local council about recycling and rubbish collection, I did ask if they had tried emptying a lawn mower box full of grass clippings into these bags, which are just a tiny bit bigger than a carrier bag.  No, none of them lived in this council's area, so didn't appreciate the problem. 

Thank goodness we don't have the disgusting 'slop bins' which my sister and brother in law have to deal with every week.  Their council have decreed that all waste food (including meat and dairy products) must go into a special 'slop bin' and that it will all be recycled to make compost.  Now I'm no scientist but I thought it was a well known fact that you can't add meat or dairy products to compost.  Needless to say these 'slop bins' stink in the hot weather and are crawling with maggots.  I'm all for recycling but that, I feel, is just one step too far.

On to somewhat more fragrant matters.  REUSE.  Having been hugely inspired by reading the wardrobe refashion blog, I'm going to have a go at making a top from an old sheet which I thrifted recently.

As you can see the material is large pink and tan daisies on a white background.  I want to have a go at a kaftan type top, and although I have a few of them already in my wardrobe, I thought it safer to buy a pattern than to have a go at 'winging it'.

I was very pleased with the pattern I found, although somewhat taken aback by the price - when did patterns become so expensive!!  I'm not sure whether this little experiment will work, or whether I'll end up looking like Demis Roussos' younger sister - but I'll give it a go.

REDUCE - or not, as the case may be.  I had a go at felting some swatches I knitted from the black wool I thrifted on Friday.  Not good!!  The swatches didn't felt one iota, but I did manage to dye a cream towel grey, luckily it was pretty old and worn out anyway.

I don't know what I did wrong, I had the washing machine at 95 degrees, and had added the towel to give friction.  And nothing happened - nada, zilch.  Oh well, back to the drawing board with what I'll turn this yarn into.  I think I'll decorate the swatches with some felt and use them as pot holders - waste not, want not!!

Good Day, Sunshine

Today started off very well.  I checked my e-mails first thing to find that I had sold one of my bags on ebay. There is something really special about selling something you have made, it's so nice to think someone has decided to spend their hard-earned money on an item you've created, and to think of that item being 'out there' in the big wide world.

The good vibes continued when I called into my local charity shop.  Sitting on top of the wool basket was this humungous pile of thick black wool.  Seven huge skeins of it labelled 'craft wool'. 

The lot was priced at £1, so with no further ado I went to pay for it.  'Ah', said the lady when I paid her for it, 'I was told to throw that lot away as no one would want it'!!  I'm so glad she didn't throw it away as I'm thinking this wil be just the ticket to try my hand at felting a knitted piece. 

I'm thinking of having a go at something like this bag from Stitch'n'Bitch nation (fortuitously acquired last summer at a car boot sale for 50p).

I can see a bag like this done in black with either a large felt flower on the front or perhaps decorated with a scattering of some of my vintage buttons.

Oh, and to top it all off, today is a beautiful sunny day here in Essex - if a trifle windy - and the monsoon of last Sunday is now just a dim and distant memory.

Button It!

I have a bit of a 'thing' for vintage buttons.  They are so pretty, there are so many different sorts, and they are so darn cheap in charity shops.

I have what is probably an obscene amount of vintage buttons and recently I acquired a few more when I did a trade with Carleen in Canada.

These are just a very small selection of the beauties I received from Carleen - check out her etsy shop - www.creationsbycarleen.etsy.com.  They are sitting on top of a wonderful book which mum bought me recently - A Passion for Buttons! by Stephanie Bourgeois.  This book gives loads of inspiring ideas for making jewellery from buttons, and is beautifully illustrated.

These are my favourite buttons of all time

Although they don't photograph too well, they are heavy glass buttons with silvered backs so they sparkle and gleam in the light.  I don't know what I am going to use these for - perhaps I'll just keep them and admire them on their card.  Can you believe these lovelies were only £1 in the charity shop - I was mighty pleased the day I found them I can tell you.

I use vintage buttons a lot in my crafting - small ones in the centre of my corsages

and larger ones on bags, knitted hats and also on my own plain T-shirts to liven them up a bit.

I like the way buttons add a bit of interest to a plain top without being too 'bling'.

Having been inspired by my new button book, I've also been making some button hair grips.

I love the way these buttons remind me of shiny boiled sweets. 

Soya Pate

I wanted to share with you one of my favourite recipes of all times - Soya Pate.  I first encountered this wonderful dish about 20 years ago when I did a vegetarian cookery evening class and the recipe for this pate was one of several pates and spreads we made.

I really enjoy this pate as a light lunch dish - today I had it with herb tortillas, but it is equally good with crusty brown bread, on toast, in a sandwich, or even as a filling for a jacket potato.

It may not look the most appetising of concoctions (there is a bit of a resemblance to estuary mud), but believe me it is really tasty. 

Soya flour - 3 heaped tbsps, juice of half a lemon, 1 clove of garlic crushed, 1 tbsp of Tamari and half a tsp each of basil, thyme, cumin and coriander. 

Mix all the ingredients together well and add cold water to make the right consistency.  Will keep for 3 - 4 days in the fridge (I should be so lucky, I ate the whole lot this lunchtime).

This is a lovely cheap lunch dish to make, which uses store cupboard items (essential when you've been away from home for a week and have bugger all in to eat!!).