Making Good Use

Yet More Vintage Patterns

Following on from my haul of vintage crochet patterns a little while ago and, after having totted up how much they've sold for on ebay, I had another close inspection of the piles of knitting and crochet patterns in the local charity shop.  Amongst the ones I found this time are:

 
A mum and daughter trouser suit pattern which somehow reminds me of the outfits they used to wear in 'Space 1999.'

 
 
More mum and daughter mini dress patterns.  Those white socks on the young teenager really bring back memories of wearing socks just like that.  Come to think of it, I believe I had a pair of shoes rather like her's too.

 
Girls jumpsuit pattern - oddly described as a 'kitten suit' on the leaflet.

 
 
And a couple of Nordic-style knitting patterns which caught my eye - probably after my Nordic-knitwear fest in the Reykjavik Charity Shop in June.

 

Stupidly Pleased

Whenever ebay have a free listing weekend, I list some of my handmade items with a higher-than-my-usual-99p starting price.  I've been listing my pillowcase totes for most of the spring and summer this way and none of them sold - until the last couple of weeks.

 
Two weeks ago this one sold - and I felt quietly happy that someone had wanted to part with their hard-earned cash to buy something I'd made.

Then today I sold not one, not two, but three of my bags in the same afternoon and I am feeling extremely delighted about this. 

 
This one is heading all the way to Bulgaria.

 
This one over the sea to Ireland.

 
And this one is staying much closer to home, in fact it's staying within Essex.  Yup, I'm feeling stupidly pleased that not one, not two, but three people want to buy the bags I've made.

The Pen Is ....

A few weeks ago I was pottering around on the net - searching for goodness knows what - when I came across a rather spiffy pen website that happened to be located in the small town where I live.  I checked it out and saw that at the time they had an online competition to win one of their Tiger Fountain Pens.   I thought I'd give it a whirl and see if I was lucky.  Sadly, I didn't win but I was still contacted by Tiger Pens who said that as I was a local entrant they'd like to send me a pen anyway.

 
The pen arrived super quickly the next day and I was delighted with it, especially the eye-catching red and silver design and the tiger on the barrel (I'm always a great fan of anything feline-related.) 

 
 Then began a search for the bottle of ink I could have sworn I still possessed.  I turned out every drawer it could conceivably have been hiding in, but no joy (probably just as well as I reckon that ink, had I been able to find it, was 40 years old!!)   Having finally bought a new bottle of ink I could now give my super new fountain pen a try out.  And it transpires that the pen not only looks stunning but it's
And, believe me, any pen that can make my scrawly handwriting look this good must be a truly amazing implement.  Thank you so much Tiger Pens of Wickford, your pen is fantastic and I'm thrilled with it.

And the Winner is ....

Linda in Canada is the winner of the pincushion giveaway.  Linda, e-mail me your address details (elizabeth (dot) yule (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk) and I'll put the one with the toothbrushing boy illustration in the post to you.

The answer to the bonus question - which BBC3 comedy does the line 'we prefer the term needlecraftspeople' come from - is 'Mongrels'.  P and I are somewhat obsessed with watching the DVD of this series (series 2 coming shortly - hooray!) 

If you want to see the clip where this line comes from it's on YouTube here (the actual line comes about 7 minutes into this clip but do watch the opening song 'Middle Class is Magical' - the words are superb.)  I should point out that there is a fair bit of swearing in this clip (well, in the whole series actually) so don't watch if you might be offended.  Anyone else out there a fan of 'Mongrels?'

We Were Hot, We Were Bothered, and We Couldn't Find a Parking Space

Yesterday, P and I thought we'd have a rare day out and go and visit Leigh on Sea.  We've never been there and I'd heard good reports of the town, and especially of its charity shops.  Things, however, did not entirely go to plan.  It was a much hotter day than either of us had expected, the traffic was terrible (I seriously had no idea there'd be THAT many cars on the road on a Friday morning,) and to top it all, when we eventually got to Leigh on Sea we couldn't find any of the car parks listed on the road map.  At this point I was having serious trouble reading the A-Z but when I could see Southend pier hoving rapidly into view, I knew we'd gone just a bit too far.  Eventually we gave up the idea of Leigh on Sea and visited Westcliff-on-Sea instead.

Luckily, there you could park quite easily along the esplanade but we didn't hang around to look at the sea, we headed up the hill to the town centre.  After a rather tasty pub lunch and a long, cool drink I carried on in my search of the charity shops.  Two of those listed on the Charity Shop Locator website had closed down but I managed to find another that wasn't listed as yet.

 
I had a couple of good finds including this Knitting Patterns for Dummies book which gives lots of basic patterns for all sorts of items with ideas of how to size them up or down or make changes to customise the patterns - my ideal sort of knitting instructions, ie not too detailed. 

 
In the same charity shop - Sue Ryder - I also got the chunkiest pair of knitting needles I've ever seen, 20mm thick and 40cm long.  I'm pretty sure they'll come in useful one day.  I also found a couple of Ann Harvey tops for £1.00 each on the reduced rail in another charity shop, which made the day out a lot more worthwhile for me.  They're both in the wash at the moment but one of them should be lovely in the autumn.

Thankfully, the journey home was a lot less uneventful as we headed directly for A127 and just followed that back to Nevendon - which was just as well as both of us by this time were hot, bothered and ready to leave the ferocious amount of traffic well behind us.

Lured by the Siren Song of Sainsbury's - Again

They're no fools those big supermarkets.  Last week when we did a large shop in Sainsbury's, we were given a voucher for £7 off a £70 shop - use by this week.  Well, at the time, I joked that we could throw that away as we certainly wouldn't be going back to Sainsbury's within a week.  Wrong!  The more I thought about 10% off our shopping, plus a chance to get a further £5 taken off with our Nectar points, plus we could also get rid of the pile of coppers and 5p pieces that I save up in the Coinstar machine - well, of course, off to Sainsbury's we went again.

 

I was quite pleased that we reduced an £80.50 bill down to £63.80 with all the vouchers and whatnot we had to cash in.  Plus, of course, there were plenty of reduced veggies and stuff to snaffle again. 

 
Amongst other things this week were two bags of diced butternut squash - 45p instead of £1.50 each - they've made at least six portions of  a tres tasty pumpkin-esque soup for the same price as buying one tin of soup.  (Recipe from my 50p charity shop copy of the 'Covent Garden Soup Book.')  I also found some pumpkin falafels - 75p instead of £2.50, and a humungous tub of oriental-style coleslaw - also 75p instead of £2.50.  Three guesses what we're having for our evening meal today.  Oh yes, and we also got another £7 off voucher to use by next week.  Very clever, very slick marketing - however, we may just take them up on the offer.

Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago, when I was ferreting about looking for fabric to turn into bunting, I came across a carrier bag with some pin cushions in.  I made these a few years ago and had totally forgotten I had them. 

 
They're made from the pages of a vintage rag book and have different illustrations of the front.  'I Clean My Teeth,' 'I Drink My Milk,' I Put My Socks On,' 'I Brush My Hair' and 'I Wash My Hands.'  They're quite substantial for pin cushions, measuring approx. 6 x 4 inches and have a plain ecru linen backing.  If you'd like to win one just leave a comment on this post - letting me know which illustration you'd prefer - and I'll do a draw next weekend.  I'm happy to post anywhere in the world.

Bonus question - if anyone can tell me which BBC3 comedy the quote 'We prefer the term needlecraftspeople' comes from, I'll send you a small prize too.  I think you'd have to be quite a fan of the show to recognise this quote but I'll be interested to see if anyone out there knows it too.

Material Girl

Fabulous weather for the boot sale this morning, and there were LOADS of sellers and buyers out and about too - which is just as well as the darned thing is not on next week because there is a balloon fiesta taking place on the site.  Mind you, I'm quite excited to see lots of balloons in the skies around here, I've never spotted one in the last seven years - and am even thinking of forking out the £35.00 it would cost P and I to go and see the night glow and mass take off.  I really miss not seeing balloons floating serenely by - they're a beautiful and very common sight in Bristol - and I never tire of seeing them from both near and far.

 
Anyway, this morning's boot sale resulted in a lot of material buying. 

 
Two large pieces of Ikea fabric - always beautiful designs and lovely cotton material - £3.00 for the two.

 
A piece of vintage Holly Hobbie-style fabric - 50p.

 
Which goes very nicely with the Holly Hobbie little cloth doll - 20p - who is sitting on a humungous piece of embroidered corduroy I found.  The cord was £2.00 and I reckon there is at least 4 yards of it.

 
Away from the fabric-buying frenzy, I found this embroidered tea cosy - 50p, and a boxed set of Roger & Gallet guest soaps - £1.50.  I really like these soaps and they're tres expensive to buy in the shops so I was very pleased to find them.

 
A couple of nice toiletries for me - Hackett Body Wash (I prefer a more masculine scented shower gel to the very floral ones) and a bottle of Frizz-Ease shampoo - I could definitely do with that for my fuzzy barnet.  They were 50p each.

 
Four vintage Tupperware beakers - with lids - 50p and a rather nice patchwork cloth bag - also 50p.  Both these are destined for ebay.

 
Another 1970s tea towel, this one featuring the Twelve Days of Christmas - 20p.  That'll be for ebay nearer the festering season.

 
And a Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt for my nephew - 50p.  I did also buy three books for re-selling on Amazon but, as is usually the case these days, two of them were utter rubbish.  The third one was quite a good find though.  All in all, it was a pretty good morning.

Linking up with Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday.

Plum Tuckered Out

 
I've spent a good part of the afternoon, picking, chopping and preserving yet more plums in one way or another.  There are now two more Kilner jars in the sideboard slowly turning into plum vodka (the two jars I put in there last week are turning a very pleasing shade of pale pink already.) 

P and I had to buy another four Kilner jars in the High Street this morning as we've now run out of them (both of us could have sworn we had more than six originally - two are still full of plum jam from two years ago.)  I want to preserve a lot more plums in port (el-cheapo stuff from Aldi) as I tried it two years ago and the plums in a port syrup were delicious in the depths of winter.  Back then I ate them slathered with cream but this winter they'll be eaten with either low-fat yogurt or low-fat custard - both of which I can highly recommend on stewed fruit.

I also stewed up a large saucpan full of plums for us to have as puddings over the next few days.  It has to be said that they are lovely simply served like that and I'll be stewing up plums for as long as they're still good.  Luckily, my next-door neighbours are very fond of stewed plums too so I'll have to see if they'd like some more.  The problem is, as yet I've only used the plums from the smaller plum tree and we've got a mega-laden Victoria plum tree just ripening up as I speak.  Goodness knows what I'm going to do with that lot.  I feel there may be a large box of plums and some carrier bags put out at the end of the drive soon for people to help themselves.  I certainly wouldn't want to see all this plummy goodness going to waste.

Bunting

 
My sister had asked if I could make her some bunting for Christmas this year.  As P was away last week I had some spare time and thought why not make the bunting for her now so that she can hang it up and enjoy it whilst the weather is still good (well, relatively good anyway.) 

 
I followed an excellent tutorial over at Homemade and Happy and the whole lot went together really easily and simply.

 
I had all the bits of fabric already - much of it thrifted in one way or another, I just had to decide what colours to choose and how to place the finished pennants for the best effect.   I was particularly pleased to unearth the cat fabric as my sister has two cats of her own who are often to be found in the garden.  I bought some white bias binding on ebay (£2.99 incl. free P&P) and away I went.  My sister's delighted with her very early Christmas present and I'm feeling inordinately proud of myself too.  If my own garden wasn't such a jungle I'd be tempted to make myself some as well.