Making Good Use

At Last, A Handmade Christmas Pressie I Can Show

Mum's cat, Lily, is very partial to lying out on her settee (see last photo in this post) so Mum has had to resort to putting an old towel down to stop Lily's incredibly long, incredibly white, and incredibly velcro-like fur sticking all over the seat pad.  Last time I was in Bristol, Mum was saying that the old towel doesn't look very elegeant on the settee and I suggested I make Lily her own little blanket to lie on.

 

Custom-made to fit the seat cushion (hopefully!!) this is cut out of a piece from an old cream wool blanket, bought at a jumble sale in April.  I blanket-stitched all round the edge in rinky-dink pink thread (to match Lily's nose and paws) and embroidered her name in one corner.  I wasn't too pleased with the embroidered name - although as it was done free-hand I suppose it could have been worse - so I gussied it all up a bit with adding a cat shape cut out of some tiny-flower-print calico cotton.  Here's hoping Lily will like her Christmas pressie, and won't have been reading my blog so that the surpise is spoilt!!  There are a whole lot of other handmade Christmas gifts I've made that I'd love to show but they will all have to wait until after the big day.

Evocative

 
This morning I was lucky enough to find a sizeable stash of old wooden Sylko cotton reels in the local charity shop.  They were in a huge basket of cotton reels of all sorts and colours so I had a good dig through and picked out the eighteen that were wooden.  I already had a few more squirreled away in a drawer at home so I've put them all together to list on ebay.  I've sold a few collections of wooden reels in the past and they always seem to sell well so I'm hoping these will at least recoup me the £2.70 I spent buying them this morning - 15p per reel.  I know how much sewing thread costs these days - and it's always on nasty plastic reels - so these vintage ones were a huge bargain.

 
The names of the colours are so well thought out too - Seal Brown, Army Khaki, Beech Brown, Dark Lovebird, Bright Violet - wonderfully evocative names that really capture the essence of their colour.  So much nicer than the plain boring numbers on cotton reels nowadays.

Good Timing

I wandered into the 'Coffee and Jumble' this morning, knowing that it would mainly be the remnants of Friday and Saturday's Christmas Bazaar, but thought it would be nice to see what was what without loads of people pushing and shoving.  I went over to have a look at what was left of the toiletries and was most surprised to find loads of little sample-size items - mainly Lancome but some other good makes too.

 
I came away with 17 samples - some boxed and some not, but all unused - for 10p each, and a Bobbi Brown eye-shadow, also 10p.  Some are for me and some for re-sale on ebay.  I really wondered how I'd managed to miss them on Friday (or how other people has missed them too, come to that) when the 93-year-old lady who looks after that table told me that they'd only been brought in this morning.  And that the person who'd brought them in was really apologetic that they'd failed to get them to her in time for the Christmas Bazaar.  Never mind, the timing couldn't have been better for me, and I'm delighted with my finds.

Bulk-Buy Bargains

Another trip to our fantastic local farm shop has given me some wonderful bulk-buy bargains.  As well as the usual fruit and veg at fabulous prices, our local farm shop always has some very surprising bargains in other food as well.

 
Apologies for the cr*pulous photo but it was the best I could manage in the stygian gloom that passes for daylight on such a grey November day.

This week I came home with three humungous tubs (275g, 450g and 500g) of herbs and spices from Bart Spices.  Bart Spices are based in Bedminster in Bristol and are well known for producing really high-quality herbs and spices so when I saw these catering-size tubs for the grand price of £2.50 each I knew they were a fabulous saving, especially as the ground ginger and rosemary are both organic.  I wanted paprika anyway so I was more than happy to find they had smoked paprika available.  Having checked out their website I reckon buying these size packs would have cost in the region of £14.00 - £18.00 per tub retail.  An excellent bargain.  All of the tubs have really good use-by dates, not that I really bother with those for herbs and spices and am happily still using things that had use-by dates five years ago.

 
Another great deal was this whole box of small organic peppermint packs - 33 in the box I estimate - for £1.00.  These were by the tills and I had to double check that such a low price was correct - it was, and a boxful came home with me.  I won't eat them all myself (though I probably could given enough time) but I'll divide them up and take some down for my Mum at Christmas.

Disappointing

Oh dear, the much-anticipated Christmas Bazaar at the local church was a tad disappointing for me.  There was no Lego for my nephew (sorry, D) and very little on the toiletries table.

 
I came away with a couple of bottles of shampoo and a shower gel for me and a Crabtree and Evelyn travel set for re-sale.

 
Apart from a boxed set of pretty vintage hankies and a boxed Irish Linen tray cloth - both destined for ebay - that was pretty much all I found.  I did also buy a couple of very pretty cupcakes from the cake stall, and a jar of homemade marmalade and a jar of homemade lemon curd (yum, am looking forward to that on my toast tomorrow morning) from the jam stall and - probably the best bargain of the morning - a large box of Ecover Non-Bio washing powder for £3.00 from the grocery table.

AND, to disappoint me even further, my sewing maching is playing up big time.  Now that I could do without as I'm just in the middle of making Christmas pressies!!  The foot pedal seems to be stuck in the 'sew-like-a-demon' speed, I've taken it apart (several times) messed around with it, put some oil in the works and still the darn thing won't behave.  I've now booked the sewing machine repair man for Monday.  Buggah, and the sewing was all going so well too!!

Listing, Listing, Listing

Apologies for the lack of blog posts this week but I'm in a bit of an ebay listing frenzy at the moment - thank goodness Christmas only comes once a year!!  Anyway, in amongst trying to get some decent photos when the sun breaks through, and mega amounts of listing, time has sort of slipped away from me these last couple of days.  Plus I've been doing a lot of cutting out and sewing up for a certain somebody's Christmas present. 

Tomorrow is the annual Christmas Bazaar at the local church which I'm REALLY looking forward to as there are usually some fantastic bargains to be had.  Fingers crossed and daylight willing, I'll be back tomorrow with photos of my finds.

Colour Therapy

As it has been such a beautiful bright and sunny day today I very much enjoyed my bus ride to and from Billericay.  Everything seems so much better when the sun is shining and the sky is blue - even if the temperature is barely above freezing.  I found some really zingy-coloured items in the charity shops today which also helped lift my spirits.

 
Two large cerise-pink towels in one charity shop - £1.35 each.  I bought them thinking they'd be ideal to replace the 15-year-old Ikea hand towels in the bathroom.  The Ikea towels have been excellent for many many years but have really got a bit too threadbare and worn now - although I really can't complain with the length of time we've had them.  However, when I started thinking about it, I realised the two cerise towels might just be a tad too big as hand towels, but would be just the right size for wrapping my head in when I've washed my hair.  Then, most fortuitously, I found two lovely M&S hand towels for 50p each in another charity shop.  The colours might not be quite so zingy - being pale-blue and moleskin-brown - but they'll probably be a better colour than the cerise-pink, especially as far as P is concerned.  So that's my towel problems sorted out for the grand sum of £3.70.

 
In a third charity shop I found this a-ma-zing vintage cushion cover - probably dating from the 1970s, judging by the colour palette - for £1.50.  It's like a mini Readicut-rug but as a cushion cover - seriously wild and wacky and very unusual.  This one's destined for ebay listing later in the week.

Time to Get Out the Lightbox Again, Methinks

 
4.10 pm - getting dark already.

For some reason I'm finding the lack of daylight uber-trying this winter and the thought of the loooooong, dark winter evenings for the next three months (at least) is making me a tad panicky.  I've had problems with SAD for many years now but the past few winters it has seemed better and easier to manage - last year I didn't even switch the Lightbox on once - this year it seems to be back with a vengeance.  As a consequence, I'm feeling lethargic (not good when I've got a lot of ebay listing and Christmas present making to do,) irritable (just ask P, who must be sick of me shouting at him,) and downright miserable.  For heaven's sake, the clocks only changed two weeks ago - what will I be like in two months time!!

So, time to get a grip.  The Lightbox is being plugged in again. I will stop procrastinating and I will take the scissors to the carefully ironed pile of fabrics and make a start on present-making.  I will get my act together and dig out EVERYTHING I've squirreled away for ebay Christmas listings - and list them this week.  And I will take myself over to Billericay tomorrow morning for a change of scenery.  Yes, I will - and, when I've done all these things, I'm hoping I'll feel a little more human again.

Unearthing Handmade 'Stuff'

One of the drawers (can I just take a moment here to say how irritated I am at seeing the word 'drawer' mis-spelt as 'draw' - I saw it twice on TV yesterday alone!!  Sorry, bit of a rant there but it DOES annoy me a tad)  under the bed contains most of my handmade 'stuff' that I hope to sell at some point or another.  I haven't really investigated this drawer fully in the two years since we bought the new bed.  Hmm, yes, well, quite a few handmade objects came to light - not only 'stuff' I forgot I owned but 'stuff' I'd even forgotten I'd made, and that's a bit worrying.

 
First out of the gloom were a set of four pure cotton lilac-coloured napkins that I gussied up with a knife, fork and spoon embroidery a couple of years ago.  I was really pleased with how the embroidery turned out but knew I'd never have the guts to use them myself for fear of getting food on them (I'm a notoriously messy eater!). 

 
Then several handknitted beanie hats were found squashed up at the back of the drawer.   They were all knitted with a view to, hopefully, selling them but they're not going to sell whilst jammed under the bed.

 
 

Although I'm quite taken with the purple and grey striped one (isn't there a poem that says 'when I get old I'm going to wear purple'  Well, I must now be officially old as I've got quite a few purple items in my wardrobe,) I've got more than enough knitted hats to keep me going for many winters to come.

 
So I've rescued them all from the drawer - plus quite a few other items that are now destined for the charity shop - and as soon as ebay have another of their free-listing weekends I'm going to list this lot and hope someone fancies buying a handmade / handknitted item for Christmas.

The Song That Stuck in My Mind, and the Wonders of YouTube

I've recently come across several people travelling to / having just come back from Bali, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I'd heard a song called 'I've Been to Bali Too.'  I couldn't remember who had sung it - although I did remember they were Australian. 

Thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, I found the song and it was by a group called Redgum.  I would never in a million years have remembered their name - although the song had stuck in my memory for nigh on 30 years.  I had no idea how big Redgum seemed to have been back in the day in their native Australia - nor how political they had been - but I know I saw them twice whilst I was at college in Winchester in the early eighties.  I think they played in a pub garden  - which seems a bit of a comedown compared to some of the huge crowds they were playing for in the videos on YouTube - albeit a rather large pub garden if my memory serves me well.  They were fabulous and I bought a tape of their songs - I haven't set eyes on that for many years (wonder what happened to it?)

I've had great fun going through all the Redgum songs on YouTube and remember many of them very well, including a lot of the lyrics.  I'm going see if I can download some of the songs onto my iPod as they are definitely tracks I want to listen to again and again.  One of their songs in particular seems most appropriate for this Armistice Day, I Was Only 19.  It may be about the Vietnam War but the words are still relevant today.