Making Good Use

A Cat Quilt for Miss Isabella

I made this quilt for my nephew for Christmas and he was very pleased with it - the problem was so was one of my sister's cats, Isabella.  Apparently, my poor nephew never had a chance to wrap himself in his quilt because every time he placed it on the settee, Isabella would arrive and immediately snuggle herself down onto it.  Bearing in mind that Issy is a cat who isn't that keen on being indoors - even in this arctic weather - and who much prefers sleeping in the garage and being on mice (and sometimes even rat) patrol, this was quite an unexpected turn of events. 

The answer was - make Issy her own cat-sized quilt.  As usual, it was a case of raiding the stash to find suitable fabrics - I was particularly pleased to find the sleeping cat material (bottom right square,) tres appropriate. 

The backing was a piece of fabric with brightly-coloured jungle animals on it that just happened to be more or less (slightly less than I would have liked in one place!) the right size.  I didn't have any proper batting so I used some thermal curtain interfacing which gives a nice thick feel to the whole thing.  I'd found a tutorial somewhere on the internet that suggested placing the front and back right sides together with the batting on top and then sewing round three sides before turning the whole lot inside out and stitching the fourth side closed.  It worked a treat and was a lot easier than the method I was using before.  Here's hoping Issy likes her own quilt as much as she likes my nephew's.

And it Did - Snow, That is

For once the Met Office got their forecast absolutely spot on.  They said it would start snowing at 9.00 pm yesterday evening, and it did (I checked outside just as Borgen was starting,) they said we'd have 4 inches of snow by the morning, and we have. 

Sadly, they haven't yet told us when the snow will be going - soon, I hope, though its blanketing qualities do make our tatty garden look quite sculptural, and it is glorious to have a totally silent street with no cars going past.

 

Thanks Again, ERNIE

Another modest win from my Premium Bonds this month - which is very nice and I'm very grateful to ERNIE (there's a little potted history of Premium Bonds and ERNIE here for anyone who's not in the UK and doesn't know what I'm whittering on about!!)  I've been on a lucky streak with the Premium Bonds these past few months and whilst none of the wins are life-changing (I'm always hoping I'll be the £1 million winner each month - well, someone has to be!!) they are useful and it's quite a nice little lift to check out my number online each month and find I've won something.

I've got an endowment policy maturing next month - I originally took it out when I bought a house in 1987 and remember thinking how flippin' old I'd be when it eventually matured.  Well, here we are, a quarter of a century later and it almost seems like yesterday when I signed on the dotted line to take out that policy. 

I remember at the time being told it would 'in all probablility' pay off my mortgage - which was £21,000 - and give me another £21,000 as well.  That all seemed like a fortune to me in the 1980's but, sadly, today £42,000 would probably not even make much of a dent as a down-payment on a mortgage.  Not that I'm going to get anywhere near £42,000 anyway - I reckon I'll be lucky to get out much more than I've paid in over the past 25 years.   Fortunately, the house was sold years ago otherwise I'd be very worried at this point.  Anyway, whatever monies I do manage to get from my endowment, I'll certainly be investing it all with ERNIE and keeping my fingers' crossed that he keeps on picking my bond numbers each month.

Brightening Up a Very Grey Day

I've sold quite a few of my handknitted beanie hats on eBay recently, so thought I'd make a few more in order to restock (and judging by the weather forecast for the next few days, I may have struck just at the right time.)  I had three balls of pure wool yarn in the stash (black bin bag stuffed under the sideboard - very classy!!) in a gloriously cheerful jade green.  As luck would have it, I also had a little flower-shaped button (from an old Buch and Deichmann hair band I used to have in the early 1980s) which was just the right size and colour.  This brightly-coloured  little beanie will certainly brighten up a cold winter's day. 

If you want to knit one of your own, there are instructions on how to make one here (though the version above was knitted on 4mm needles with 109 stitches cast on and decreases beginning with a k10, k2tog. row.) The pattern for a two-needles knitted beanie is the most often searched for blog post I've ever written.

Thank Goodness for Continental TV

Yay, it's Saturday evening - which means another two episodes of the Danish TV drama Borgen, it's pretty much the only thing on TV I look forward to watching at the moment (apart from the new series of Superscrimpers, of course).  My goodness, but the cut's in the BBC's funding have become scarily apparent in the last few weeks - Christmas telly was unusually dire this year with only the outstanding Absolutely Fabulous worth tuning in for - and now that the superb (but oh-so-short-a-series) Sherlock has finished, there is nothing but absolutely nothing, to watch on the BBC at all - except imported Danish programmes.

Somebody at BBC4 should be heartily congratulated for having the foresight to start showing programmes that require subtitles.  We've had some wonderful foreign dramas on over the past 18 months or so - most of them of the crime / thriller genre.  The ball started rolling with the two Swedish Wallander series, swiftly followed by the first series of The Killing (which to be frank, I found a bit too long-winded for my taste.)  Then there was Spiral - a French police series - very good, and made me feel that despite my ungraded French 'O' Level, I did understand a bit more of the language than I'd realised.  These were followed by the superb The Killing II (and more gorgeous Faroe Island knitwear), and now, from the same production company, we have Borgen.  I wasn't sure I'd get on too well with it at first as it's a political drama, not a thriller, but you know what, it makes for fascinating viewing and gives an interesting insight into Danish life.

I do wonder if the person who decided to show TV that requires subtitles grew up, like I did, in the 1960's when BBC children's TV was dominated by continental imports.  Anyone else remember the French 'Belle and Sebastien', the German 'Robinson Crusoe' (with it's memorable theme tune,) White Horses (which came from Yugoslavia,) and the wickedly scary Singing Ringing Tree from East Germany?  Ah, happy days. 

Perhaps It's Just Me

I was somewhat taken aback last week when, venturing into the Barnardos charity shop in Basildon - and having spied two rather spiffy long-sleeved T-shirts for my nephew - I was then charged 2p for a plastic bag.  As it happened, Barnardos were the first charity shop I had gone in after getting off the bus - indeed, they are directly opposite the stand where my bus stops in the bus station - so I didn't have another carrier bag already that I could have put the T-shirts into and as it was raining I didn't want to just carry them around with me.   So, with ill grace, I coughed up the 2p.

Now, I'm very much in favour of supermarkets charging for plastic bags and I always take my own bags with me when I go food shopping.  However, I'm not so sure that charity shops should be charging for bags.  Surely Barnardos should do what many other charity shops do and re-use donated plastic bags instead of manufacturing their own - which just adds to the mountains of waste already in landfill.  Not only was I charged 2p for the darned carrier, but the bloomin' thing was such poor quality that it had gone into holes before I got home thus getting the T-shirts wet and meaning that the bag had to go straight into the bin.  I'd much rather have been given a second-hand carrier that I could have then folded up and re-donated back to one of our local charity shops that are far more down-to-earth and don't have 'posh' bags with their names on it.

Anyway, such was my ire, I got the sewing machine out and made myself a new pillowcase tote which I shall be folding up nice and small and stashing in my handbag so that I've always got a bag on hand in the future.

Is it just me, am I being unreasonable?  What do you think about charity shops charging for new plastic bags when they could easily re-use second-hand bags?

My Goodness, What a Cheap and Tasty Dish

I had the new Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - River Cottage Veg Every Day - for Christmas, it's a wonderful book which is packed full of veggie inspiration with beautifully styled photos of all the recipes. I've been trying out a few of the dishes over the past couple of weeks.  Tonight's 'experiment' was Swede Speltotto

Hugh's version here

My not quite so elegantly styled version here. 

It was very tasty, filling and unbelievably cheap.  I used pearl barley instead of pearled spelt - which is suggested in the recipe (I suspect pearled spelt would be an impossible request anywhere in SE Essex.) Half a bag of pearl barley - 25p, plus half a swede - 20p, one onion - 10p, some vegetable stock, a handful of dried parsley (it would be lovely with fresh parsley but I didn't have any) and a good grating of parmesan (me and my gall bladder are walking on the wild side with adding the parmesan but it would be pretty bland without it.)  I reckon the total cost for both of us is somewhere around £1.00, so at 50p per serving (and with some leftover to add to a veggie soup tomorrow) it was a REALLY thrifty evening meal.

Last week I tried out the recipe for Vegeree - the veggie equivalent of kedgeree - that was darned tasty too.  I've got all sorts of other recipes lined up to try - pasta with greens, garlic and chilli is taking my fancy right now. 

 

 

Nordic Knitwear on the Cheap

One of the many excellent bargains I got in the charity shops of Kingswood over Christmas and New Year, was this hand-knitted polo neck jumper.  I liked the raspberry and cream combination of colours, I liked the Nordic snowflake motif, I quite liked the price - £5.00, but I really didn't like the fact that the hanger stated it was a size XXXL - or something equally off-putting.  Nevertheless, being a huge fan of Nordic-style knitwear at the moment, plus only having one really warm thick jumper suitable for Arctic conditions (not that there seems any danger of that this winter, but those could be the famous last words!!) I decided to go ahead and buy it.

Now I know it's nowhere near as classy as Sarah Lund's infamous Faroe Island knitwear but it is handknitted and it only cost me a fraction of the price of her's (over £230 for a copy of THAT jumper, if my calculation from Euros to Sterling is correct) plus this one fits me a treat and the Faroese jumpers only go up to size 14 so even if I could afford one I wouldn't be able to fit myself in one!!!!

Very Posh Blankie

My Mum gave me some gorgeous chunky Rowan wool for my 50th birthday in 2010, with the idea that I could make myself a really posh patchwork knitted blanket with it.  Yesterday, I FINALLY finished it.

I have absolutely no idea why it has taken me over 18 months to complete this project as the wool was beautiful to knit with and lovely and chunky so each square knitted up very quickly.  In fact, thinking about it, it wasn't the actual knitting that took the time - it was the sewing it all together.  I think I completed the knitting about a year ago, and I started sewing it all together this autumn, but it took the cold snap last weekend to finally galvanise me to finish it.  It is super warm and very cosy to drape over my lap in the evenings.  It's a good size too - it's shown here draped over the two-seater settee.  Thank you, Mum, for the beautiful wool - hope you like how it finally turned out.

I Can Resist All But Temptation

I've been reading some blogs where people are able to feed their family for a week on tuppence-ha'penny and a quarter of tea (or so it seems,) or have foresworn buying anything new for the entire year, and I think to myself - yup, I ought to try and be a bit more frugal.  I ought to cut our food bill down a bit, I've got more than enough clothes in my wardrobe to not necessitate buying anything new in the foreseeable future, I ought to be a bit more mindful of needless spending. 

So, what do I do when I get a £25 win on the Premium Bonds?  Do I squirrel it away in my bank account, do I re-invest it in a couple more Premium Bonds?  Do I heck!!  No, on the self same day that I washed all my jumpers and thought to myself I'm well sorted for the colder weather, I start browsing on the Ann Harvey website where they just happen to be having a 70% off sale.  A couple of clicks later and I've spent most of my winnings on two brand new items of clothing.

Including this cowl-neck jumper which was reduced from £38.00 to £11.40.  The other top I got - which was reduced from £28.00 to £7.50 - seems to have disappeared from the website.  Both tops are really lovely quality (as always from Ann Harvey) and I'm delighted with them.  Wish I could have resisted the temptation, but at least they were both stonking great bargains!!