recycling

Hmmm – thoughtful…

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I am in thoughtful mode today…

This morning I read a very moving thread on a forum I frequent. It was started by the daughter of a hoarder, who has clearly descended into other kinds of mental health mayhem, and has resisted all attempts to help her sort through her belongings, sometimes with violence. She is facing eviction from her home, such is the level of mess, but is still quite clearly in denial and turning on anyone, including her own daughter, who tries to help her.

Thing is, I know I could so easily turn out like that… but seeing what an awful toll it has taken on her family, I know I really, really need to sort my life out now, before it gets any worse, & make amends to those who’ve lived all their lives with my inability to sort the wheat from the chaff and deal with it appropriately.

Obviously, I have just emptied the contents of a 400 square foot workshop, and half of the contents of my mother’s loft, into our home, and it’s currently quite overwhelmingly cluttered & messy. But I looked at some of the piles of debris this morning & realised that they are not recent; they’ve been there for a long time, and it’s been cluttered & messy for all of the 20 years we’ve lived here. I don’t want to live in this kind of debilitating muddle, yet I feel quite paralysed when it comes to sorting the mess out… a fair amount of it is genuinely worth more than just throwing into the landfill skip, even if that would be the “healthiest” thing to do for everyone else’s peace of mind. I have just sent one big carload of fabric, yarn & thread off with a charity that takes it out to craft workshops in the third world, and am sorting out another; there may even be a third. I’ve dropped loads of books into the bookbank and will car-boot a shedload more; that’s quite literally, a shedload, a 5’ x 7’ one. Some of the stuff is actually worth a reasonable amount of money, and I have been Ebaying for all I’m worth over the last few weeks, and earmarked other things to go as soon as they’re tarted up a bit. And much of it does have use or value to someone somewhere, even if it isn’t financial; I’ve also been giving stuff away as hard & fast as I can, but am getting discouraged at the number of people who yell, “ME ME ME!” when you Freecycle something, then fail to turn up not once, but several times. I’ve taken some decent stuff to the Tip & just hoped that someone else will take it on, but I’ve seen the guys there have to smash up too many lovely solid-wood, well-made bookcases, sideboards, chairs & tables to have much hope of that; they don’t have room to keep it all, either.

It may be a classic case of projection, but I can’t help feeling that some of my problem is actually the result of living in such a horrendously wasteful society. It actually feels quite wrong to me to let good stuff go to waste like that; to see good craftsmanship & fine materials wantonly destroyed just because it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. And some of my problem has actually been caused by other people’s good intentions! I opened the door of my workshop for ten minutes to let some fresh air in when I was clearing it out ready for the next tenant, and bless my soul, in that ten minutes two people brought yet more good stuff in for me to use, sell on or otherwise rehome… they too believe it’s just plain wrong to throw away fabric, thread, yarn and tools that are still perfectly good & useful, just not wanted where they are. But that’s how I ended up with such a ghastly cluttered muddle in the workshop area… so MUCH stuff, much of it absolutely lovely, so kindly given, by so many open-hearted people, but that was because they too had amassed too much stuff… and so it goes round & round! I do wonder sometimes whether sending it off to third world countries is actually helping anyone out there, or whether I’m just exporting my problem!

Our economy runs on encouraging people to buy more & more stuff, and throw it “away” the second it’s no longer fashionable, but I suspect that most of us feel at some level that that just isn’t right. But we also feel that we do deserve the odd treat, that of course we are going to use it, or we actually need it, or that we can’t part with things that were given generously to us even though we didn’t want them or ask for them, and so the problem starts to build… For some time now I’ve had a policy of not buying stuff I have no immediate or definite use for, unless I think that I can sell it on quickly, and if I do get something to keep, I have to let something else go – as long as it can be disposed of responsibly – and therein lies the problem; far too many things are “stuck” here. I think I may have to go one step further, and not acquire things until I’ve already cleared the space for them. I also need to streamline the activities I do; if I actually ever want to have the time to actually do some of them, I need not to spend all my time looking after (or even FOR) the stuff I need in order to do them!

I also need to talk to my nearest & dearest, and sort out some kind of present-giving protocol for the future. Seeing my mother wavering over things we’d given her many years ago, that she clearly didn’t actually want or need in her much-smaller new home, was heartbreaking & made me realise that a gift, however well-chosen & well-meant, can become a millstone round the recipient’s neck. It was easy enough to say to her that gifts are a token, that you don’t actually need to keep the thing itself to appreciate the spirit in which it was given, but much harder to come home, see the piles (piles? more like avalanches) of stuff I’ve been given, and apply my own reasoning to the mess I’ve been living in – and subjecting all of my family to.

I think there probably is hope for me; I don’t hang onto real rubbish, or have any trouble letting go of my recycling, though sometimes I simply forget to put it out for collection. But I  don’t always agree with everyone else what consitutes “real” rubbish, and probably never will, and I do have a huge organisational problem caused by not being able to use things, sell them (which I do do, mostly pretty successfully) or move them on to a more appropriate home fast enough. And the more I get nagged, or people make little “helpful” or barbed comments about it, the more resentful I feel and the less I feel motivated to do anything about it, even though I do know they are right and I do need to do something about it. Oddly, I feel threatened & attacked, and quite illogically that it’s as if people are somehow trying to chip away at my identity when they insist I should get rid of things, although I don’t want to think I’m that materialistic, and I too hate the mess! There’s a part of me that feels quite overwhelmed and just wants rid of all of it, but a bigger part that feels quite resentful that everyone seems to see it as all my fault, and solely my problem, when I can’t help seeing it partly as a symptom of a whole society that’s high on consumerism and far too ready to trash things that do still have value.

Anyway, I simply have to stop letting things in for a while, to save what’s left of my sanity and that of my poor long-suffering family; a mere ten years or so should do the trick…

Quick update…

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Just a quick update here: I’m very busy just now, closing down my physical shop. It seems I just don’t have the time to be a shopkeeper! I’m not upset about this; I’ve enjoyed my year there, probably just about broken even, had a lot of fun and learnt a lot, but it became apparent even before Christmas that it really is a 24/7 job, to start up a new business & give it what it needs to get off the ground, and there are too many other, perfectly legitimate, calls on my time. I’d like to have a little time to call my own again!

So I will start posting again in more depth next week; I’m going flat out trying to clear the unit just now, though I don’t have to do this completely as the next tenant is doing much the same, only more so, and taking on some of “my” stuff!

But not quite so flat out that I missed today’s uber-bargain down at the Tip; 29.6m of cotton duck canvas, acres of industrial-strength Velcro, and all sorts of other unwanted-by-someone tentmaking stuff. I might just have to have a go at making my own bell tent now; I might even have some time to do it in…

An apology…

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Sometimes I have to admit I was wrong about something. Naturally, that hardly ever happens. But when it does, I’m quite prepared to apologise & set the record straight. So here goes: I was wrong about food mixer/processors.

For quite some time now I have maintained that they are a giant waste of space & money. The last one I had, a big Magimix, I freecycled a few years ago and haven’t missed at all. As we no longer have a dishwasher (and in fact the components couldn’t be put in a dishwasher anyway) I felt it just transferred the work from one side of the meal to the other; instead of spending half an hour chopping, slicing & mixing before the meal, we spent half an hour trying to wash dried-on food scraps out of the more inaccessible corners of the thing after the meal. Also I couldn’t “feel” the food; my hands give me the best indication of when a dough, pastry or a crumble is ready. You can actually feel the texture change as the ingredients meld into something new. The Magimix speeded all the boring stuff up, but made it impossible to catch that magic moment when it’s ready but not overprocessed.

But last weekend a friend who brought up a big family then went on to run a Bed & Breakfast establishment asked whether I’d like her old Kenwood Chef. “It’s not even in a fit state to Freecycle, but it’d be such a shame just to take it to the Tip,” she warned me. Remembering other good cooks I’ve known who have sworn by these sturdy old workhorses, and that my older daughter & her friend make cupcakes to die for & that would undoubtedly sell like – well, hot cakes – if they ever made enough of them, I said we’d be delighted to try it out. So her husband brought it round at the start of the week. It cleaned up very nicely, but I was too busy to play with it until yesterday. And now, all I can say is a huge thank you to Ruth & Richard; truly a magnificent gift!

Two large loaves of bread, a batch of meringues, a raspberry clafoutis and some scrumptious peanut butter cookies later, I can vouch for the fact that this thing does actually save a lot of time & effort, and does the job really well. It’s a whole lot slower than the Magimix, and that’s an attribute I appreciate now; I have time to judge when things are ready. I think it’s also more thorough, and much easier to wash up. There’s enough capacity to cook-and-freeze, even in a large household situation. If I ever wanted to, there are all sorts of attachments & accoutrements I could buy to add on to it, but I’ll stick to the basic functions for now & see what time & trial & error bring up.

The main drawback that I can see is that it’s really heavy, being mostly metal; luckily I have some workspace free in my new-look utility room that it can live & be used on, because if it had to go back in a cupboard after use, it wouldn’t come out again in a hurry! But although by & large I am getting rid of kitchenware & gadgets that don’t earn the space they take up, I think this one will well & truly justify sacrificing a bit of clear space for.

So there you go! I was absolutely wrong to insist that gadgets hardly ever make life any easier. The right gadget, in the right situation, can indeed make a difference. So for anyone who has a large & hungry  household to cater for, and enough space to house one, I can heartily recommend the Kenwood Chef, even if I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend actually going out & buying one!

Ooooh – nice!

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Bit of luck yesterday – I went down to the Tip with loads of cardboard, polystyrene (aaaargh – horrible stuff!) and wrapping from the utility room revamp. “We’ve got something for you!” Lee greeted me. “Some alpaca, in fact.”
Curious, I trotted over to the covered skip, thinking most likely I’d find a bit of raw fleece from an older animal that someone had meant to use for toy stuffing, perhaps. But no – two big bags of absolutely gorgeous-quality, squishy-soft, white, crimpy, supremely spinnable fluff, labelled “weanling”… the sort of stuff I’d have to hand over at least £30-£40 a bag for, if I were inclined to actually buy any. I love spinning (and wearing) alpaca, but don’t usually feel I can justify spending that much on my hobby – maybe £4 for a little bag once in a while. I spun up a quick sample skein last night and enjoyed it hugely; it almost spins itself. There was also a bag of washed Jacob’s fleece, which I shall give to my neighbour, as I already have 4 bags of it. I have to ask  – who throws these things away? There’s no sign of moths or  mice or anything else that would make me reject it. It may have belonged to someone who isn’t spinning or felting any more, for whatever reason, but how come they couldn’t find anyone to give it to, rather than just dumping it? Not that it matters; luckily the gents were alert & it’s made its way into my stash now. Into the very top, the next-project bit of it, as it happens.

What a lovely find! I’m a very happy bunny. Thanks, gents…

And I’m hardly even going to mention the pheasant – poor little fellow threw himself in front of a car (not ours, I hasten to add) on a country road at the weekend whilst we were helping with the move. We drove one way; the road was clear. We offloaded & drove back again 10 minutes later; there he was, dead as a dodo. He was on a bend & anything much shorter than a human would have been hugely at risk of being squished themselves, trying to drag him away – so who could resist? A large pot of delicious stock & several tasty salads later, I’m very grateful to him…

A week of happy hunting…

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Well, I’ve had a lovely week! A week of hunting down much-needed useful stuff for free or very cheap…

A friend of mine has just escaped from an unfortunate marriage, about which the less said the better. She left literally with a couple of bags of clothes and nothing else. She had found herself an inexpensive flat, which I went to see with her a week ago; it’s over one of the local village halls, and I was amazed & delighted to find that it’s big, quirky & delightful, originally built in 1735, with high ceilings, big south-facing windows with glorious views, and sensibly-sized rooms. So we had just one week to furnish it on a shoestring! I was just one of several bargain-hunters on her behalf, but all that was there to start with was curtains, a cooker & a table.

It’s amazing what you can find when you actually go out looking for it… Needless to say, I already had a fair amount of useful stuff stashed away; rugs, sets of saucepans & casserole dishes, mugs, glasses, plates, knives, kitchen utensils and gadgets that were far too good to let go to landfill. But furniture and beds, bedding, lighting and shelving were all needed too. So I raided my mother’s linen cupboard, and dragged my elder daughter round the car boot sales last weekend, and we returned triumphant with some lovely things, including a really nice chest with rattan drawers, for very little money. Some wonderfully sturdy shelves turned up at the tip, as did some grand-scale very-posh lampshades. Her family found her some free sofas & a computer desk for her to continue her studies at, and other friends have weighed in with more shelving, wardrobes, & a fridge. A cheap but functional second-hand washing machine was sourced via Facebook. I found a quirky standard lamp on Freecycle yesterday evening to fit one of the giant lampshades, and we picked it up on our way to fetch a bed. She picked up the keys yesterday morning, and within a couple of hours it was starting to look like a home; by the time we trotted off home this afternoon, it was looking great!

The beds presented the biggest problem. There are normally lots of beds on offer on our local Freegle/Freecycle groups, but not this week. I found one on Gumtree and we duly went & picked it up, but as we’d just been in a sick teenage smoker’s flat, we didn’t realise until we were halfway home that actually it was very smelly – not nice at all. That one I’m afraid did go to the tip, not before its time. But I found one for her teenage daughter on Ebay and won it with a last-minute bid; that one is a lot better, and then a mattress turned up on Gumtree which was perfectly acceptable for my friend. So a little bit of money wasted there, but luckily not very much, and I’ll know next time to ask some sensible questions before committing to buy something like that – or even travelling to look at one.

I’m amazed how little we have spent overall, and a lot of that was because we only had a week to kit her out; given a month we could probably have done just about everything for free or very nearly so. We were lucky enough to have storage & access to transport, and a few hours free in the evenings & at weekends to hunt & chase stuff up. And how lovely it all looks now it’s in situ… you really, really don’t need to spend a fortune to make a lovely, cosy, welcoming home.

The only problem is, I can’t stop! Now I need someone else to kit out on a tiny budget… 😉

At last…

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I’ve finally thought of a way of using cuffs! On my rare days off, I haunt the charity shops of Dorset, raiding the “Reduced” rails for cotton shirts & pyjamas to turn into patchwork fabric. You can get some very decent fabric, in reasonable quantities, for £1 that way. I’ve worked out a way of slicing them up so that you get the maximum quantity of usable fabric, plus a quantity of “seam yarn” for rag rugs etc., from each garment, depending on how it’s constructed. But I’ve always struggled with how to use the collar & cuffs & generally ended up popping them into my scraps-I-really-can’t-do-anything-with bag. This goes off to a charity shop, where they get paid for rags by weight; every little counts!

But today I cracked it; I found a nice “Next” pink striped needlecord shirt for £1 on Monday, that you’d have to have an incredibly slender & well-sculpted figure to wear. I could see straight away that it’d make several stunning fabric hearts, or possibly needlecases; maybe some of each. As I was cutting it up today, the cuffs fell together onto the tabletop in such a way as to remind me I’d lost my glasses case recently, and suddenly I could see how I could make them into one, very quickly & easily. And 20 minutes later, my glasses had a new home! It even has a useful little pocket on the back, too, that I’m going to make a tiny matching mending kit for. Will post a “how-to” sometime after weekend!

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Well, I’ve always wanted one of those…

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…some days just have a lucky star. It was great to see one of my firm e-friends last night & today; she had to bring one of her offspring down for a university interview, left him with his sister in Southampton & came on down to stay the night and most of today with me. Whilst there were hardly any breaks in the conversation, we did take 10 minutes off from nattering to pop down to the local tip. The manager had saved a tin of buttons for me, bless his cotton socks (buttons are a steady earner for me) and there was a pair of quite astonishingly OTT but splendid red glass beaded chandelier-like ceiling pendant light fittings that simply had to come home with me – irresistible, though I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with them. They were a little battered so I’ve performed a little delicate surgery to make them look whole again by amalgamating some of the sets of glass droplets. Now all I need is the right setting for them…

But the goodies didn’t end there. There was a nicely-weathered 50’s style green & cream enamel saucepan,  a dinky single egg poacher, an interesting plate, a manicure set which has hundreds of uses (very few of them anything to do with my raggedy fingernails) and, glory of glories, an intact & clean Spong mincer, still with its grating/slicing attachment. A couple of years ago I realised that I needed some kind of manual food mill, and bought a rather elegant tall & slender stainless-steel one half-price in the Lakeland sale. But to be honest, the amount of sheer effort it cost me to grind enough coffee beans for a mug of coffee, or  a handful of oats for a crumble, has meant that it’s spent most of its time with us resting in the cupboard. Then a few weeks back, a battered little old blue Spong appeared down at the dump, which I couldn’t resist rescuing, and in a spirit of idle experimentation, once it was clean I threw a handful of oats into it and turned the handle. Perfect, fine oatmeal, in seconds, with virtually no effort! The only problem was convincing the Other Half and the Offspring that anything that came out of this well-used & somewhat tatty item could possibly be hygienic enough to eat…

So the arrival of this almost-pristine beige one is cause for some celebration on my part. It’s missing one blade, the coarse one, which I can make up from the older blue one, which came with two. There’s a market for these stylish little vintage items, so someone will get a good, working, genuinely-useful bargain at the next Boscombe Vintage Market, and I get to keep the tidier one. As aforementioned, it even has the grater/slicer attachment, with both drums & the pusher. I’d struggle to feed my whole family just with  one of these little gadgets but I do have a bigger, newer mincer that does meat, and this one is lighter & neater for everyday tasks. As well as easier on the eye…

It hasn’t just been a good day, but a good month; I’ve been rescuing things from my mother’s downsizing chuck-out, including a set of battered but still-usable egg-poaching rings – which can, of course, also be used to cut scones & cookies out – and acres of aged, torn sheet-music which has 101 uses in card making, altered art & bookbinding. And I found a few small items in the charity shops local to the vintage market, including a lovely soft yellow flower-printed 70s flannelette sheet which will make a marvellous quilt backing for £1 (in need of a wash, which it’s since had) and a pretty little eggcup which is very much in the style of Susie Cooper, one of my favourite china designers, for just 20p.

There is of course the usual problem – where to store it all? But I’m really lucky; anything that turns out not to be worth the space I’ve allotted to it can be popped onto my stall & sold on. It’s the perfect excuse, and the very best form of “recreational shopping” – I get to enjoy the hunt & spend very little money on items I really do like & want to keep, but if that doesn’t work out, I know I will get my money back at the very least, and usually a little bit more as well. Viva Vintage!

Vintage Finds

A little downtime…

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…in more ways than one. It’s not every day that I fall down from the loft…

I should have known better; it’s not the first time that that ladder has slipped on the bathroom floor. I’d hurtled up there before work, to look for some knitting machine parts (which weren’t there anyway) and on the way down, the ladder just slipped away underneath me. Luckily I still had one hand on the side of the trap, which braked my precipitous plummet, and somehow I fell clear of the fallen ladder, so only ended up with a sprained ankle and some right royal bruising where it can’t be seen. But methinks it’s time for a proper loft ladder; it’s not as if they cost very much, and I might not be so lucky next time.

I had to close the shop for a couple of days & keep my foot up to keep the swelling down. But that gave me a little time to play with some of the resources that have come my way lately, that I’d been saving up for a “rainy day”… some pretty 50s wallpaper that had survived reasonably intact by lining someone’s drawers, a couple of old maps (an outdated Michelin map and a tatty old National Geographic wall chart from 1952) some A5 waste offcuts of paper & card from my landlord’s printing press, some strong linen thread that I know won’t sell, and a lovely book on bookbinding that I treated myself to back in the summer. Add some big needles, some strong glue, some scraps of lace & ribbon, and I came up with these:

…a series of little notebook/journals handmade, and hopefully decently-bound, made entirely from reclaimed resources – well, apart from the glue. I shall try selling them at the next Boscombe Vintage Market, and perhaps on Etsy afterwards as well as in the shop.

So all’s well that ends well!

Use up your scraps!

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It’s been a good week, in many ways – any week in which an elderly Bernina virtually lands in my lap is a good week. But yesterday I enjoyed best of all; I sold one of my scrap-yarn shawls, crocheted on a 15mm double-ended Tunisian hook, and the gentleman who bought it for his wife evidently thought it was the most glamorous thing he  could possibly have found for her, which was lovely. And then I did a fingercrochet workshop.

How could I have gone so long without the wonderful feeling of creating something useful and hopefully attractive too, just using my fingers and yarns that no-one wanted, or that were otherwise surplus to requirements, in a  very short space of time? It’s so simple, it’s easy to forget how rewarding it is. For those of you who haven’t yet come across it, fingercrochet is exactly what it says on the tin – crochet done on your finger, without a hook. You just wrap the yarn around a finger – I’ve recently discovered that my ring finger works best – and use that instead of a hook. Because it’s a fairly big implement, in my case at least, you need to use either very chunky yarn, or several strands, to achieve any kind of “coverage” but because the stitches are so big, you can make a hat up very fast. You soon find that your finger, although not as smooth as a metal hook, is rather more helpful and bendable, and that you can feel the tension in a way that simply isn’t possible with a hook.

My one “pupil” was very dubious that she would be going home with a fully-formed hat inside two hours. But not only did she complete it, she had time to make a pompom to add to the top! I’ve added a new page for the pattern (and also now for a matching collar) so that all of you who crochet can make one at home… I look forward to seeing your photos, here or on Ravelry.

Sarah models one of the fingercrochet hats...

The Reclaimed Christmas Project…

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Buttons, buckles, beads...

Following on from my musings in the previous post, I’ve decided that this year I’m going to reclaim Christmas, in more ways than one. I’m probably not the only person who’s had enough of the commercial version; of the endless grimly-glittering tawdry tinfoil decorations which start to appear in mid-September along with incessant adverts for wildly expensive bits of plastic or noxious potions, of giant flock snowflakes obscuring the aisle lables in supermarkets and “this year’s colour” plastic tree. I’ve nothing against fake trees, as I love the real thing, especially where they belong (outdoors)  & don’t like to feel I’ve been directly responsible for the needless death of an entire tree. But I really cannot get my head around people feeling they have to buy a new plastic one every year just so they have the “right” colour… Our current tree was rescued from the Recycling centre a couple of years ago and does a grand job; however this year it may get left in its box as there’s a Lawson’s Cypress in the front garden that needs a good haircut and one of the upright branches of that would make a fine Christmas tree too – it even smells right. Handling spruce always brings me out in a rash, anyway.

I’ve also had enough of spending too much money at Christmas. The retailers have parents over a barrel;  every year there’s a blizzard of adverts for electronic must-haves that every other child in their class will surely be given – and some of them undoubtedly will be – how can you possibly be so mean/inhuman/unloving as to say no? You love your child and you really, really don’t want them to feel deprived/disadvantaged/unloved, especially not on Christmas Day… but it does start to wear a bit thin when said children have technically reached adulthood and could, probably even should, go out & earn said must-have trinket for themselves.

I have a clear idea in my head of what I want Christmas to be; a time of goodwill to all living beings, and that includes the trees. A time to reflect on why we’re here, and a time to celebrate the life that we have. A real feast with family & friends, but not at the expense of going short for the next couple of months. A time to remember those who are really going without, and a time to try in some way, however small, to help. An oasis of goodwill & good cheer, peace & tranquillity in a mad, mad world…

Not much chance of that, really! But there are ways I can undermine the dominant view of Christmas as an opportunity to spend, spend, spend, and indulge, indulge, indulge. Quite apart from what we as a family get up to on The Day itself, I’m going to run the Reclaimed Christmas Project at my shop on Wednesday afternoons from here to – well, mid-December. We’ll be making beautiful & unusual festive decorations, cards & gifts from reclaimed or natural materials. And buttons, LOTS of buttons, thanks to a wonderful find at the Recycling Centre this week. There’ll be plaids & checks & stripes, there’ll be ricrac and lace and possibly even sequins, but there will NOT be overblown tinsel so thick it looks like it could do with a good prune. There’ll be felted wool,  embroidery silks and a little bit of angelina; there will NOT be irritating flashing lights that make you grind your teeth whilst attempting to hypnotise you. Homer Simpson will NOT be featuring; in fact there will not be any blow-up or cartoon characters at all, not even a cartoon reindeer that looks like it’s the morning after a very heavy night before. The only festive icon perching on the roof will be the robin that lives in the bushes opposite. However, there may be gingerbread & icing, not to mention tissue & crepe paper. There may even (shock, horror!) be a little religious imagery, though I shall try not to upset the Thought Police too much. And if there are any icicles, they’ll probably be made of ice. “Keep it simple, keep it joyful, keep it real,” will be my motto!

I’m hoping that even if you’re not able to come & join me, you”ll be there in spirit & doing your own Reclaimed Christmas in your own special way.

And more buttons...