Making Good Use

Finished - Thank Goodness

The everlasting project of the patchwork knitted blanket finally came to a close just before I went off to Bristol. 

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out - especially as there are some widely varying weights and plys amongst the wools used.  Even the colours seem to go together quite well considering every single piece of yarn used was thrifted, including the black yarn to sew it all together. I'm not sure how much it cost me to make, probably somewhere in the region of £10 - £15.  Time-wise it took a little over two months and was a nice simple project to do whilst watching telly.  As it's pretty nippy in the house this evening (and I've no intention of putting the central heating on until absolutely necessary) it will be getting it's first outing whilst I'm watching Coronation Street.

Apologies for the rubbish photo - the light here this afternoon was dreadful.

Hiatus

Many apologies for the unexpected blogging break.  Things have come to a bit of a 'head' at the moment, and much soul-searching and decision-making is going on as a consequence.  I do hope to be back in a few days with some proper blogging.  Hope you are all enjoying the wonderful sunny weather this weekend.  A bit of sun makes everything seem better.

Surprisingly Good

This morning Mum and I went to a small High Street just a short bus ride away that we haven't been to for quite a long time (a few years at least).  There are only three charity shops there and one of those is for the local hospice and is notoriously expensive.  However, we did manage to find a few nice bits and pieces - a cardigan and jeans for Mum and these three items for me. 

There's a vintage T G Green 'Kitchen Things' storage jar which was £1, a very floral 1970s vintage double sheet - £1, and a nicer-than-it-looks-in-the-photo damask table cloth - also £1.

The best charity shop there was one that is oddly situated at the back of a shoe-mender's shop.  We weren't sure if it was still going as the back of the shop was dark, but when we asked the chap in the shoe menders about it he put the lights on for us and so we had the pleasure of poking about in an empty charity shop all by ourselves - wonderful.  That is where the floral sheet and the table cloth came from, and also where Mum got herself the pair of jeans.  I definitely think it's somewhere we'll be going back to on a more regular basis.

Plastic Fantastic

This motley collection of 1960s plastic toys were salvaged from the bottom of the old tin bath in Mum's outhouse.  They're all still a bit grubby, despite a good soaking in the sink, but I'm going to keep hold of them for pure nostalgia.  I'm not quite sure where they'll be put for the time being, one day, when we're finally settled, they might be quite good in one of my two printers trays (sadly packed away in the loft for the last five years or so).

I do remember playing with some of these bits and pieces, and it's amazing to think they've been mouldering away for something like 35 years.  My sister and I, and our friends, used to spend many many hours playing in the outhouse as children - well, when you grow up in the south west of England you certainly have to have 'wet weather' contingency plans - and the outhouse was just the ticket.  Detached from the house but close enough for us to play in there safely, large enough to get probably four or five little girls in there at any one time, and easily accessible from the back door of the house.  And, most importantly of all, weather-proof.

It's odd that the two main colours of the rescued plastic bits and bobs are pale blue and bright red - perhaps that's the main colours plastic toys were made in then - and most of the pieces bear the ultimate legend of toys of my childhood - 'Made in Hong Kong'.  They do tone very nicely with Mum's Cath Kidston oilcloth though.

Cream Crackered

From this

 

To this

Via this.

Who knew that there was quite so much junk in Mum's outhouse!  We're both filthy dirty, achy and totally cream crackered, but at least we've got the satisfaction of a good job well done.

For any non-UK readers, cream crackered is a bit of modern rhyming slang.  I'll leave it to your imagination as to what it rhymes with.

Gone West

I've gone west to see my family (and Lily) for a few days so posts may be a bit sparse.  We've not got a firm agenda planned out and much of it will depend on the weather - wet, wet, wet after tomorrow apparently - just to make a change!! 

I finally finished sewing up my knitted patchwork blanket last night (hurrah!) but the photos will have to wait until I'm home again.

Hardcore Frugality

This piece in Saturday's Daily Telegraph certainly caught my attention.  How on earth can someone live on just £1 per day for a year?  The article in the paper was only small so not a lot of actual information was given away but it did say that Kath Kelly (the woman who managed this amazing challenge) did a lot of eating at free buffets, shopped at jumble sales and visited supermarkets an hour before closing to pick up bargains.  Apparently, she also picked fruit from bushes and trees beside a ring road (as she lives in Bristol I suspect I know which ring road she is talking about), and collected £117 in loose change dropped in the street.  Even that is amazing as I do keep my eye open for dropped change and sometime find 1p, 2p, or even 5p pieces - but can't imagine I find £1 in total during the year, let alone over £100.

Kath Kelly has written a book about her challenge which I would be very interested to read.  Sadly, it is out of stock on Amazon - which probably is on the strength of the article in The Telegraph.  I wonder if I could get hold of it from the library?

Better Late Than Never

I know a lot of fellow bloggers have mentioned this book in the last year or so, all praising it highly.  Dear Gill at Lucy Locket (www.lucysarah.blogspot.com) sent me this copy absolutely ages ago.  I added it to the teetering pile of books beside the bed and somehow it got subsumed beneath other books I picked up in charity shops or car boot sales (pretty much all of them thrillers), until last week when I found it again half way down the pile.

I was in the mood for a change from murder and mayhem and thought I'd give it a go.  Well, what a fabulous book.  It is so easy to read, and although it's not chock-full of action, the narrative is so gentle and descriptive that after the first couple of pages I was well and truly hooked.  For some reason I'd imagined it was an American book (probably because I've read a lot about it on American blogs) but it's not, it's set in Suffolk, and the descriptions of the countryside are wonderful.

Also amazing are the descriptions of the desperate poverty the Mortmain family find themselves in at the beginning of the book.  It certainly puts our present 'credit crunch' into perspective (the book is set in the early 1930s), and I love some of the inventive re-fashioning the female charaters do in order to squeeze every last useful moment from their clothing.  Inspirational stuff.

Talking of the credit crunch (and I'm not sure the 'CC' is the reason), I realised yesterday that although it is the beginning of September, I haven't spotted any Christmas cards for sale yet.  Not in charity shops (some of which have Christmas  cards from mid August), nor in W H Smiths.  Has anybody spotted these early harbingers of winter yet?

Price Book and Speculation

I've finally decided to start a price book to note down what I'm actually paying for groceries at the moment.  I had another 'sticker shock' moment in Aldi this week when I realised their unsalted butter was now 99p and not 69p as I had been imagining.

I dug out this old notebook from years ago, the front half had been used but the back portion was still good, so I turned it upside down and started from the back.  I'm not quite sure I'm doing it correctly but I've allocated each letter of the alphabet one page and am noting down the item, the price, and where I bought it (and size of pack if relevant).  I intend to have it in the shopping trolley at all times and then I can refer to it if I think I've spotted a bargain, or if I want to check that the price I'm paying for something is actually the best I can find.  I'm hoping it will be useful in my quest to save money on food items, but if not I'm sure it will make interesting reading in years to come.

I've done really well with selling my handmade items on ebay this past week, and yesterday I sold this bag.  Interestingly enough the address to send it to was 'The Royal', ITV Yorkshire.  Now I may be barking up the completely wrong tree here, but I do wonder if my bag is going to be used as a vintage prop - I think I'm correct in thinking 'The Royal' is set in the sixties (I've never actually watched it).  Could it be my bag is destined for fame and fortune on the small screen?  I do hope so.

Blackberrying

In the midst of a mighty downpour this morning, I put on my kagoul and popped down the road to the little narrow laneway where I'd spied some juicy looking blackberries the other week.  I thought it best to go picking those particular blackberries when the weather was especially inclement in order to minimise the risk of somebody shouting out 'Oi!  You shouldn't be picking those.'  I'm pretty sure they are wild blackberry bushes, and not the overflow from somebody's garden, but I did feel a bit like a criminal whilst I was picking them.

Mind you, I haven't gone foraging for blackberries for many years.  When we were children it was a regular part of our annual calendar and many a Sunday afternoon in September was spent with my parents and a trusty walking stick (to reach the really juicy ones that were always tantalisingly just out of our grasp), filling Tupperware containers from the hedgerows.  Dad was very fond of blackberry jam and my poor Mum would then have to cook up these pounds and pounds of blackberries to make his jam.  Nobody else was that keen on it but as children we really enjoyed picking in this free food from the hedges, even if we weren't going to eat the final product.  

I doubt there would be enough in the laneway here to make much in the way of jam, but there is plenty enough for a blackberry and apple crumble, and hopefully I'll be able to pick in more again next week.