How to find the happy medium?

thriftwizard1 Comment

Having now discovered the joys of decluttering, I have got to the point where once or twice recently I’ve wanted things, only to discover that I’ve given them away… It was bound to happen eventually. The thing is, I really don’t want to backslide either financially (“I’ll just go out & buy another”) or in hoarding terms (“I’ll find somewhere to keep this, it might just come in useful…”) so somehow I have to find a middle way. Easier said than done!

I know that when it comes to my stall, I want to up my game & just have stuff that’s irresistible, on a stall that looks inviting. In some ways, less is more, here; I suspect that some of the things I’ve been puzzling over as to why they haven’t sold, have simply been buried in the melee as people turn my stock over to see what else I’ve got. I need a certain amount of variety so that things don’t get stale & I’m not trotting out the same old, same old every month; it’s good to give things a “rest” from time to time and always have something new. Well, as new as “vintage” can be! But at the same time it’s easy to accrue far too much stuff, some of it not as nice…

I also need to look at the materials I keep for our own craftwork; I have an ideal opportunity for this coming up as I replace some inappropriate storage with something that will fit the space more neatly, blend in with the rest of our furniture nicely and also provide more & better storage. I think it’ll take twice as much stuff as the present “storage solution” but I shall try to make sure it doesn’t have to; I suspect that half of what’s currently buried in the old sideboard will no longer be useful to us and can be given away! And there’ll be more room for dancing too – one of my teens can be entertained indefinitely  & inexpensively with henna, kohl, fabric, chiffon, sequins, bells, Bollywood & Egyptian music and a small audience or a few “pupils” …

I still have two biggish items that haven’t sold on Ebay. One I will hang onto & try other routes for selling; it’s worth what I’m asking for it & I’m not going to part with it for less than I paid for it, just wait until the right buyer comes along, which will happen eventually. I might even take it to Boscombe Vintage Market this weekend.  The other, my much-loved Jones embroidery machine on a Singer treadle – well, I have to admit I didn’t really want to sell it anyway! Once the new storage is installed (starting this afternoon, I hope) it can come back in from the garage and be put straight back into use. There are still other biggish things, that are less useful, that can be sold to make more space, not to mention about 500 excess craft books…

And it would be useful now to make some more money, as well as space. I’ve had a breather after closing down the shop, which was longer than intended thanks to bits of Boscombe Clock Tower falling through the roof of the Royal Parade, forcing the cancellation of last month’s Market. I’ve meant to do a couple of car boot sales, but other things have taken priority; sadly those other things (my father-in-law’s terminal illness in another country, Olympic tickets and 3 birthdays) have cost us quite a lot of money and I need to cut unnecessary spending hard and top the family coffers back up next month. So hold onto your seat belts for a month of making do & mending, foraging, freezer-emptying, inexpensive home-grown fun & generally wringing every ounce of value out of each & every penny!

Long time no see…

thriftwizard2 Comments

I know it’s been a whole month since I posted, but I’m not referring to that – it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to see quite so much of our floor! I’ve been busy, very busy, decluttering like mad. It’s needed doing for a very long time, and bringing all the shop & market stock back here tipped it from something that really needed doing, to something acute – if I didn’t do it, I was going to go under mentally, or break my neck tripping over a pile of something. There are still a few piles hanging around, waiting for new homes, but I reckon I’ve reduced the rubble by something like three-quarters over the last four weeks. Some things have been sold on, although the last vintage market was cancelled, but most have been given away, either to charity or on Freecycle/Freegle, and some even dumped.

It’s interesting that now the kids are older (youngest now rising 17) the resistance to change has diminished. When they were younger, they’d complain about the mess, but often actively derail my attempts to actually do anything about it. But now, they’re helping me clear & deep-clean, and are full of ideas as to how we might redecorate & reorganise; we may not always see eye-to-eye about this, but it feels like a huge step forwards. I think I’ve been too easily discouraged in the past; there was a point about two weeks ago, when I seemed to have been working flat out for two weeks but it didn’t look any different. At that point, I nearly went under & gave up, but thanks to an inspirational thread over on MSE, and having a bit more time on my hands, I kept going this time and now it’s really beginning to look like the home that I’ve always wanted to live in.

Some of the things I’m parting with I’m very sad to see go, but I have to face the fact that one lifetime is too short to do everything I’d like to do & learn everything I’d like to learn, and one household, shared with 6 other people, isn’t big enough for 2 treadle sewing machines and 9 spinning wheels. And I was spending too much time looking after things, or indeed looking for things, to actually achieve very much at all!

But some of my attempts to reduce my hoards have been blind alleys… this morning, I emptied & cleaned the fridge. I’d decided that some of my beloved cultures had to go, too – one of my “endearing eccentricities” as DD1 calls them, is a belief that we in the West don’t eat or drink nearly enough traditionally-preserved or cultured foods, or a wide enough variety of foodstuffs, for optimum health – but I failed miserably! I’d just about brought myself to the point of pouring the milk-Kefir down the sink when DD1 announced that she loved the stuff & would take over responsibility for it. The Kefir a l’uovo smelt gorgeous, so that got refreshed too, and the ginger-beer Kefir is a household staple, much loved & drunk daily by several of us. The sourdough starter’s in regular use & I have some Kimchi virtually every day; that only left the Kombucha, where I’ve had first my old SCOBY, then a newly-bought one, die on me in short order for no apparent reason. So I’d made up my mind that I’d stop making that, but I came across a bottle at the back of the fridge, and I’d forgotten just how lovely it tastes! Oh dear, there’s no hope for me, is there?! But the small amount of work & space involved in looking after my “fridge-pets” pales into insignificance beside the complex, healthy & above all, delicious tastes they reward me with, for almost no money. However, the four half-empty jars of mayonnaise, several “stubs” of home-made jam and three bottles of tomato ketchup did get rationalised…

One positive thing that has emerged from the chaos; I’d forgotten just how nice some of the things I’d accumulated were, even if it’s no longer appropriate for me to hang onto them. Below is a pic of one little beauty that I rescued, looking very sad & with bits hanging off her, from a street market about 18 months ago. A bit of elbow-grease & know-how returned her to working order & decent appearance quite quickly & she’s on Ebay now. She’s not a practical wheel to spin on for any length of time, unless you have tiny feet & a lot of patience, and want very fine yarn, but isn’t she pretty?!

Further thoughts on hoarding…

thriftwizard1 Comment

…albeit mostly aimed at people who would die rather than read this!

A glut of something useful or edible does not constitute a hoard. The slowly-diminishing store of marmalade, crab apple jelly & other preserves in the garage is not a hoard; it was made to use up gluts & it’s there to be eaten & enjoyed as well as given away. It has all been made within the last two years – now eat it, before I’m forced to let this year’s crops rot on the trees & bushes! The fact that it didn’t come from a supermarket or contain 70% sugar does not mean that it’s not fit for human consumption.

Helpfully throwing out things that the helper considers naff isn’t actually helpful at all, especially if, like my kitchen timer, there is only one and it is in constant use. If you don’t like the chicken-ey look of the thing, buy me one that works that we all like. And having more of some things than most people also isn’t hoarding, if they are actually needed & being used, like the contents of my spice rack. I do know that most people do not have 20 different herbs and spices in their kitchen, but I cook 95% of our meals & snacks from scratch and all of those are ingredients in things I prepare & cook regularly. Not one of them is anywhere near out of date.

Sometimes “hoarding” is simply a response to rapidly-changing circumstances. Yes, there are probably too many baking tins in my cupboard, but as the number of people in the household is still subject to dramatic variations in a very short time, I still do need four loaf tins some of the time, and often without notice. However I will concede that we have far too much cutlery; since we no longer have a dishwasher, we no longer need 4 x 7 of everything. But it’s good, well-balanced stainless steel stuff, and we do have space to store it, so I am not planning to throw it out just yet but to Freecycle it when it’s clear that none of you needs it. I am also really, really narked about plastic ice-cream tubs, which are stealing some of the space that the loaf tins could otherwise sensibly be kept in; why can they not be recycled in our area? The answer here is obvious; not to buy ice-cream, but to make it in future, if people think they really need it.

And where do you draw the line between “preparedness” and hoarding? There are two big packs of lentils in my cupboard that have gone out of date; I am still planning to eat them as they’re not that far gone (late 2011) and I won’t replace them until they are nearly empty, but I do believe in keeping some basic stocks in hand in case of unexpected contingencies. In a large household, that means more than in a smaller one; a tray of twenty tins of baked beans isn’t a hoard, it’s just a month’s supply in a household that contains 3 or 4 young men. I also like to buy plenty of storeable food when I see a good deal; I do rotate the stocks as things come in so that the oldest get used up first. But that’s why it takes me an hour to unpack our monthly supermarket shop & there are tins & packets all over the kitchen floor for that hour; if you’re tripping over it, it makes more sense to help me do it properly than to shout at me.

And anyone who recycles my carefully-saved jamjars just as we come into peak preserving season clearly hasn’t learnt the lesson from when their father recycled all my wildly-expensive Le Parfait jars “because they hadn’t been used in weeks…”

Well, I do feel better for getting that off my chest – oh dear, chests – yes, I do need to do something about the two chests of perfectly-good fleece under the stairs…

Edited to add: in case you think I’m backtracking or prevaricating up above, more stuff went out today – another bootload to the Tip, & the boot has now been refilled with things to drop off to a charity shop tomorrow. A big bag of yarn went off to two young friends starting to knit, and some needlework kits flew away on Freecycle. Two items sold, one on Ebay (off to the States!) & one elsewhere. And it’s a free listing weekend on Ebay so I’ve earmarked at least 3 other items to list, one of them large… but there are still several huge piles of stuff to tackle. Slow & steady wins the day…

Hmmm – thoughtful…

thriftwizard6 Comments

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…

thriftwizard2 Comments

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…

thriftwizard4 Comments

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!

thriftwizard1 Comment

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…

thriftwizard4 Comments

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… 😉

Fox Attack!

thriftwizardLeave a comment

I got a panicky phone call up at the shop on Friday lunchtime, “Mum! Mum! Come home! A fox has got Spice!”

Spice is an 8 year old Pekin bantam, eldest surviving bird & the brood mother of most of the rest. A couple of years ago she went menopausal, developed cockerel feathering & stopped laying, but we reckoned she doesn’t owe us a thing after 5 years of laying & brooding & she doesn’t crow, so she bimbles happily round the garden with the other 3 bantams during the day. The big girls are in the run at the back for most of the day as they’re too destructive to be out all the time in a small urban garden, but feather-footed bantams don’t/can’t dig so they can stay out. I’d be heartbroken to lose Spice; she’s a calm & friendly little bird & has done the rounds of all the local schools & playgroups over the years, with various broods of chicks.

Luckily one of my daughters was out in the garden when the fox struck, and although he had Spice in his mouth he dropped her & ran off. I shut the shop up quick, ran home & took her straight up to the vets, fearing the worst as she couldn’t seem to walk, there were feathers all over the lawn & a fair bit of blood. But the vet checked her over, announced that the wounds were quite shallow, and on hearing that she’d been “caught” before, twice, by spaniels (who of course just wanted to play with her, as spaniels do, and put her straight down to wait for the next move) he said, “She’s clearly a survivor, and I reckon she has a pretty good chance of making it…” He gave her an antibiotic shot & a steroid, and I took her home again.

To cut a long story short, today she started to show some interest in food again, and this afternoon she plodded cautiously out of the cat basket and then across the garden to sit in the sunshine beside the chicken run. Relief! We were all cheering her on. We’ve lost birds before now who have just plain died of shock after a relatively trivial injury, and one rabbit who died of fright when a buzzard flew too low over the garden; it’s amazing how some creatures are just born survivors & others aren’t. I think temperament has as much to do with it as luck; the first time we saw Spice, she was a tiny, determined & unflappable 6 week old grower plodding calmly around in a huge pen of wildly overexcited, much bigger birds who were squawking & flapping madly, falling over each other & piling into corners. Unnoticed in all the mayhem, knee-high to all the others, she was calmly hoovering up all the spilt grains whilst the others rushed around chaotically – a bird after my own heart!

Anyway, we aren’t going to take anything for granted; she goes back to the vet for a checkup tomorrow. And Mr Fox is still around; he was outside by the compost heap just after dark this evening & must be very hungry (or feeding early cubs) to come so close to people so often, so constant vigilance is the order of the day for now…

At last…

thriftwizard2 Comments

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!

Image

Image

Image