Making Good Use

Table Runner

 
As part of my sister's birthday present, I made her a table runner to go on her lovely rectangular pine dining table.  I'd never attempted making something like this before, ie quilting, using batting, and using bias binding.  Although I cogitated, deliberated and proscrastinated for weeks over the various stages of making it, it didn't actually take very long in total to come together. 

 
The trickiest bit was hand sewing the bias binding on, although even that worked out just fine once I got going.  The bias binding was some gorgeous natural-coloured linen which I found on ebay.  The corners are a bit dodgy but for a first attempt at using bias binding I was well pleased with myself.

 
I've got just enough of the various jewel-bright Kaffe Fassett fabrics to make myself a runner too - although mine would have to go on the sideboard as our dining table is a) in a disgusting state so is always covered by a tablecloth, and b) is round so wouldn't look so good with a runner on it.  Mum has chosen some material in various shades of green and has requested a table runner for her birthday too. 

Apologies for the fairly poor photos but I took these a few weeks ago when the light wasn't too good, and when I realised that photgraphing something as long as the runner is a bit of a b*gger!

Spring, She Has Most Definitely Sprung

 
Another gloriously warm and sunny day today, and all the fruit trees are springing into blossom at the same time.   The garden is looking really pretty at the moment (if I ignore the shaggy lawn that needs cutting - again, and the weeds which are springing up at an alarming rate!) and I'm already dreaming of picking plums, pears, apples and greengages  come late summer.

 

Playing Catch-up

Back home in Essex again now after having had the most fantastic time in Bristol with my family.  Highlights included: surprising my nephew and meeting him from school one day - he was most astonished to see us all there to greet him; playing hide and seek with my nephew, Mum and sister on Mother's Day; a lovely afternoon tea at the Swallow Royal hotel, something we haven't done in years, to celebrate my sister's birthday; and just generally spending lots of time with my Mum.  Oh, and there were a couple of good finds from a local charity shop too - always a bonus.

Of course, being back home again means plenty of mundane tasks like getting in the shopping, deciding what to have for an evening meal, washing up, and making the most of this wonderful warm and sunny weather by getting as much washing done as is humanly possible.  I won't even think about how much dusting, hoovering and general cleaning needs to be done.  It's full steam ahead with ebay listings again too.  I won't bore you with the full details of last month's buying and selling but the three highlights were definitely the vintage Owzthat game which I found in the local junk shop and which sold for £14.26, twenty wooden cotton reels (also a junk shop find) that sold for £14.40, and the 50p vintage Mouli Grater (from the first boot sale of the season) that sold for £16.00. 

The glorious weather is set to continue through the weekend so I'm hoping the car boot sale this Sunday will be really good - I'm looking forward to it already!

I Do Love Me a Jumble Sale

The much-anticipated Scout jumble sale near my Mum's house was just as fabulous as always.  Amongst many other things, I found

 
a pair of Dorma Country Diary curtains in excellent condition - they'll be heading to ebay.  And three aprons, two half-aprons and a full-size one.  I'm rather partial to the jaunty red and white seersucker one with little anchors all over it but they'll all be listed on ebay too eventually.

 
Another pillowcase to add to my collection, a large piece of hessian - could well come in useful in a craft activity at some point, and a handmade log-cabin patchwork cushion cover made with vintage Laura Ashley fabric.  The cover will be for ebay but I'm keeping the beautiful old ticking-covered feather cushion (not in the photos) that was inside it for myself.  I already have plans for a new cushion and this feather insert will be just the right size for them.

 
A stack of books - some good for re-sale, others already bagged up for the local charity shop - including a 1939 Lea & Perrins recipe booklet in the most amazing condition.  I expect this will end up on ebay too but I'm going to have a look through at some of the recipes first.

 
A rather nice, if slightly grubby, vintage kitchen timer.  Hopefully, it'll clean up well.

 
The most amazing vintage bread bin - I love the typeface used for the word 'bread.'  That'll be for ebay eventually but it'll be staying at my Mum's for a while as I can't cart it back to Essex on the train, my suitcase is already groaning at the seams with my other jumble sale finds that are coming back home with me.

 
And, finally, a 'Detective Sarah Lund from 'The Killing'  style' hand-knitted jumper.  I gather her knitwear in the Danish detective series practically has a fan-base of it's own so I'm hoping this lookie-likie will sell well on ebay next autumn (just in time for the screening of the second series of 'The Killing' on BBC4!)

On top of all this lot I also found a few tops for my nephew, and a pair of summer trousers and a sun top for my Mum.  I think I spent somewhere in the region of £7.50 at the jumble which is not bad considering just how many items I managed to find.

I'll link this post to Apron Thift Girl's Thrift Share Monday and Me and my Shadow's  Magpie Monday.

Faux

I found another faux fur item at the 'Coffee and Jumble' yesterday, this time a jacket, to go with the coat I found a few weeks ago.  I'd  checked out how much faux fur things sell for on ebay when I picked up the coat and they seem to be pretty good sellers so I was pleased to find this jacket for £4.00.

 
I'm going to hang on to both of them until the autumn, they won't eat or drink anything hanging up in the wardrobe over the summer.

Off to Bristol tomorrow for a week - highlights will include Mother's Day, my sister's birthday on Monday and a scout jumble sale on Saturday afternoon.

Another Sunday, Another Boot Sale

Another fine and dry Sunday here so we went off to the car boot sale again.  There were quite a few more sellers than last week as people start getting into the swing of boot sale season again.  I found a few useful bits and bobs, mainly for myself this time.

 
A goodly selection of Soap & Glory bits and bobs - £2.50 for the lot including the Timotei and Aussie shampoos.  I've still got a few shower gels left from last year's season so I'm being a bit more selective about the brands I buy this time.  Shampoo though is always a winner with me as it's darned expensive to buy a decent brand in the shops and the cheapo stuff doesn't suit my hair at all.

 
Two embroidery booklets - to sell on ebay - 20p each and a pack of three-fold aperture blank cards, 50p, for me.  Card blanks can be quite a price too so I was pleased to find these, they always get used up quite swiftly when I make a batch of handmade cards.

 
A vintage pure linen tea towel - always worth a punt on ebay - and this one depicts the characters from The Canterbury Tales so is quite unusual.  I paid 50p for it.

 
Finally, I took a gamble on this soda syphon as I thought it might be worth re-selling.  Not sure that I made the right call with this but it was only £1.00 so I haven't lost too much.

I'll link this post to Apron Thrift Girl's  Monday Thrift Share and to Magpie Monday

Chitting, Stitching, Quilting and Knitting

 
I've got my 'free' Charlotte potatoes from The Daily Telegraph chitting along nicely in a little box in the kitchen.  Although the potatoes were allegedly free, as was the large growing sack to plant them in  (sans compost) and five packets of Thompson seeds - basil, coriander, tomatoes, chilli and something else that I can't remember right now - the postage was £4.50.  I could probably have got the whole lot cheaper somewhere else but it seemed like a good offer and I went for it.  I had a nice little crop of potatoes last year and I'm looking forward to seeing how large the crop will be this summer.  Ah, it's so nice to be able to start thinking about growing things in the garden again.

There's also been some very basic quilting going on, along with some hand-sewing of bias binding - neither of which I've ever attempted before but it seems to be working out quite nicely.  It's for a secret birthday present so I can't say too much about it as yet.  It's one of those projects that start out as quite a simple idea and then sort of get bigger and more complicated as you're going along, or is that just me!

 
I've also done some frogging of a hot-water bottle cover I knitted in the autumn.  The sizing was all wrong and the wool - some thrifted cream Icelandic Lopi - was a bit too coarse for my liking.  I know just what I'd like to knit with it this time, a plain cushion cover which I can gussy up with some rather nice painted wooden buttons I bought at the Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair last summer.  Probably not the time of year to be thinking of woolly cushion covers but who cares.

Finding a Bargain in an Unexpected Place

Long story short, my right hip has been rather painful for the past two and a half years.  I've tried a chiropractor a couple of times, got through pack and packs of Voltarol tablets and limped, struggled and cursed about my hip on many many occasions.  Finally, P insisted I try a physiotherapist.  Wow, what a difference!!  This morning was only my third appointment but already the hip is a lot easier and less painful and although she still thinks the joint itself is a lot of the problem the way she has managed to help with the pain has been fantastic.

Now, oddly enough, in the waiting room of the physiotherapist are boxes and boxes of second-hand books which the receptionist is selling in aid of charity.  I had a cursory glance at them the other week but thought they were only fiction.  This morning, I sat in another part of the waiting room and spied on the top of a box this excellent tome.

 
Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cookery Book.  I've already got a copy of this which I've had for near-on 25 years and which is really falling apart at the seams.  I mentioned the state of the book in this blog post more than three years ago and, believe me, it has got a whole lot more tatty since then.  I'm using the book even more at the moment as there are loads of really tasty and low-fat recipes in it and I'm not sure how much longer it's all going to hold together, especially as the spine has disappeared totally.  I've been keeping my eye open for it in charity shops and at car boot sales but with no luck.  I was so pleased to find another copy for £1.00, even if I wasn't expecting to find it in a physiotherapist's waiting room!

 

Look at the Muck in 'Ere

Oh dear, the arrival of some Spring sunshine has really shown up the grubbiness of the house in a big way.  Last Friday evening the energy-saver lightbulb on the upstairs landing finally gave up the ghost.  Neither of us are sure how long it had been used for but six years as an absolute minimum.  Considering that this light is left on all night every night it has done sterling work over those past six years.  Anyway, as we had to get a small stepladder out to change the bulb I asked P to fetch down the rather nice 1930's hanging glass light shade at the same time so that I could give it a rinse out.  Oh dearie me, that thing was thick in dust and full of dead insects - yuk.  Once it had been given a gentle wash in warm soapy water and carefully dried and hung back up (it's not ours but belongs to the landlord so I'm uber careful with it), I kept having a look at it and thinking how lovely it was to see it so clean.  And that led to me looking carefully at lots of other items that don't get taken down to be cleaned as often as they should.

Today I've been taking down net curtains, cleaning the inside of the windows, hoovering behind the settee and generally trying to clean some frankly disgustingly dusty and murky corners of our home.  The inside of the living room windows were a positive health hazard - although it really can't be that long since I cleaned them - and I was shocked by the black residue that came off when I cleaned, and by the swags of cobwebs that were intertwined around the curtain track.  Good grief, where does all the dust and grime come from?  We don't even live on a busy road!  When we lived in Billericay we had the main Southend to Liverpool St railway line at the bottom of our garden and I always swore that the copious amounts of dust in that house came from the chippings on the rail bed.  Sadly, as the railway track must be at least half a mile away from this house, I can't use that excuse here.  Tomorrow I've got my eye on the floor-length curtains in the dining room, and I'm too ashamed to admit how long it is since those have been washed!!

 

Speculate

.... to, hopefully, accumulate.  The local junk shop (which just gets better and better as far as I'm concerned) had some large bolts of fabric for sale last week.  Now, me being me, didn't do more than give them a cursory glance when I was last in there but I did spot that one of them was by Colefax and Fowler.  Four whole days later, I finally remembered to check out if this particular make of fabric was any good on ebay.  Bilmey O'Reily, some of the Colefax and Fowler fabric made over £100!!  Cut to this morning, and I was in that shop as fast as my little legs (and the shopping trolley) would carry me.

 
Phew!  The bolt of Colefax and Fowler 'Fern' material was still where I had last seen it, so I bought the whole lot - approx. 8.5 metres at £2.00 per metre.  Now, I don't normally spend out £16.00 in one go on anything but I am hoping that I will get a good profit from my speculation.  The pattern is not really my cup of tea, although I do like the fresh Spring-green colour, but it is plainly of fabulous quality and is an upholstery-weight glazed cotton fabric.  I'll be very interested to see how much it sells for when I list it on ebay next week.