A chance to learn…

thriftwizard1 Comment

Some time last year I posted a comment over on “Casaubon’s Book” to the effect that I needed to learn to spin and also to machine-knit. The spinning I cracked fairly soon afterwards, and have enjoyed so much that I’m saving very hard to add a brand-new (handmade) spinning wheel to my stable of workshop tools, now that I have a clear idea of what kind of spinning I like best and what features will be most useful. But the machine-knitting was proving a little harder to get to grips with. I tried contacting the nearest machine-knitting group I could find online, but they’re 30 miles away, which is too far to go on a regular basis, and they didn’t know of anyone closer.

But on Saturday, on my way back from the monthly Weavers, Spinners & Dyers Guild meeting, my elderly Louet wheel fell over in the back of the car and smashed an already-cracked demijohn that was awaiting its final trip to the Tip. So I popped it straight down there whilst the engine was still warm. And there sat a battered box containing a Singer Designer 2 knitting machine… naturally it had to come home with me. It’s so much less complicated than any of the other full-size machines I’ve seen that at first I thought half of it was missing. But the instruction book listed the parts, and there they all were. And this machine is extremely simple; it’s probably not very versatile, but who cares? I can work it! It’s just one step up from my Simpleframe knitter; basically the same, a bit bigger, with a carriage!  No complicated tension devices or impossibly-intricate storage cases which you can never shut again, just a bed, a counter, a carriage and a few straightforward weights, combs and hooks. I’d made a scarf out of scrap yarn within a couple of hours of getting it out of the box…

Now I know I will eventually be able to master those great complicated beasties up in my loft (a Passap and a Toyota, with hundreds of bits and manuals and pattern books) as I’m beginning to understand what’s going on and how. But in the meantime, I have a tool with which I can churn out simple scarves & jumpers that I can embellish with other techniques, and maybe one day I can use it to help other people in the same position.

I never cease to be amazed how things work out…

Serendipity!

thriftwizardLeave a comment

A quick tale of absolute serendipity…

I picked up an industrial treadle on Ebay this week for the magnificent sum of £5.50, which I will use to run the 96KSV7. It came with a resident but non-original head, an elderly Singer 16, and a box. The box has an opening lid, but it was locked and there was no key. My standard Singer keys didn’t fit, nor did the magic flatbladed screwdriver; a key that opens some of the tiny Saxonias, and also my china cabinet, nearly fitted & worked but didn’t quite. And there we stuck…

This morning I popped down to the Tip with a friend who does love a good Wombling session. We could see some old “keys” quite some way down in the Metals skip. She was searching for some weights to dangle from the end of a strip doorcurtain; old keys would be perfect. So, with permission, we rigged up a “hook” of some old copper piping and went “fishing” for the keys. With much giggling, we eventually hooked most of them out. But they’re not keys; they’re more like picklocks, possibly the tools of an old locksmith’s trade. And when we got home, the first one I tried opened the Singer 16’s case effortlessly.

That’s “Karma Shopping” as one friend calls it, at its finest!

Grim vision…

thriftwizardLeave a comment

Oh dear. I seem to have caused a bit of upset this afternoon; my older daughter is only just speaking to me again. She talked me into going for a walk; I decided to load up my handcart with all the rubbish from my workshop & drop it off at the Tip, which she was happy with. Not so happy, though, when they told me there was a dressmaker’s dummy waiting round behind the “landfill” skip. It just about fitted into the cart, much to Madame’s evident annoyance. But when I stopped & picked up the lovely sharp old bowsaw too, her annoyance turned to agonised embarassment… all the way back along the riverbank, she was expecting some raincoated detectives to spring from the bushes and arrest me. “You look just like you’re planning a murder, Mother! Why else would you be towing round a dressmaker’s dummy and a very sharp deadly weapon? People get arrested for carrying small knives, let alone that thing!”

You have to see the funny side – which she couldn’t, at the time. The dummy was for a young home-ed friend hoping to do a textile GCSE; new, they cost £140 which is out of the question for most students. And the bowsaw is for cutting branches; we didn’t have one & it’s a far better tool than a pruning saw on thicker branches. Ah well, next time I’m planning a murder, I know who not to take with me…

Raise your glasses, please…

thriftwizardLeave a comment

…to whoever threw out two complete boxes of Edinburgh Crystal white wine glasses this morning. I shall enjoy a glass or two at their expense!

Have to say, I wouldn’t go out of my way to acquire posh glasses. But if they come my way by chance, I’m not going to turn them down. It’s nice to enjoy the odd trapping of success, even if it was someone else’s success. I shall probably end up car-booting them to raise money for my new “travel” spinning wheel, but for a night or two I shall peer at my teenagers over a cut-glass rim. It would amuse me to drink home-made wine from them, but somebody seems to have drunk it all…?

A friend & I “did” a car boot sale last weekend. It’s a vast one that people come to for miles around, and I took stuff that I thought would sell well, but threw a couple of odds & sods in at the last moment. Needless to say, the decent 30s & 50s china didn’t sell, even at 50p per item, no books went at all at 20p, and the old clothes I scooped out of the back of my wardrobe flew off the rail at £1 per item, which was more than I’d paid for a lot of them. I was struck by how things had changed; people used to go to car boot sales for a morning’s entertainment. They’d scoop up a few pretty bits of china for a few pence, treat the family to an ice-cream, hunt out interesting books or hobby items, and everyone would go home happy. Not any more… people were begging us for bedding, cutlery and other essentials. Young parents had spread out blankets behind their cars, trying to sell their sobbing children’s toys. Scary… and I suspect this is only the beginning.

Ohmigosh, ohmigosh, ohmigosh…

thriftwizard4 Comments

Slipped down to the Tip yesterday in a spare 10 minutes, Monday often being a good day after people have decluttered their attics at the weekend. Nothing obvious, so I climbed up to look in the Metals, and there, not 12″ from my hand, lay a very tatty industrial Singer… naturally it leapt straight into my arms. I could see a gigantic cracked motor and a rusty old footplate, which would be no use to me even if I could have taken them; was there anything else? A few moments anxious scanning revealed a bag of bits including the (broken) bobbin winder, and a thread stand out of reach, which Lee kindly hooked out for me. I grabbed anything else loose that might be vaguely sewing-related, and ran off, a mere 10 minutes late for my next appointment, hyperventilating gently…

It’s a Singer 96KSV7 from 1940. 96s were generally fast tailoring machines, but this one looks as if it’s been adapted (SV meaning Special Variant) to use heavy threads & thick fabrics, as it has a tension knee-lift and a higher shank than the only other 96 that has passed through my hands. There was a bit of very thick strong thread trapped in the shuttle race, and it has a massive needle fitted. Upholstery, maybe? I seem to have picked up most of the correct bits, and a few totally random ones too, but now I will have to find a treadle table to fit her, as I think this might well be the all-round heavy-duty machine I’ve been hunting for for my planned workshop. She stitches beautifully, from fairly-small to a gigantic 4 stitches per inch, and has reverse. I wonder how she’ll like quilting? There’s plenty of room under that massive arm.

When something like this falls into your hands, you know it’s just meant to be. I knew I needed to part with my 1895 Singer 15 Light Industrial (probable) sailmaker, as I know someone who needs it more than I do and will use it regularly to do something well worth doing. I’d been wondering how I was going to replace it for the little heavy-duty stuff I need to do, but someone up there was ahead of me, as usual. Now, what colour do you think she’d like to be next?

A real find...
A real find...

Free paint!

thriftwizardLeave a comment

Just passing the word around – if you need paint or woodstain, and don’t want to shell out loads of money, or want to use something that would otherwise be wasted, get down to your local Tip now! At ours and others nearby, paint is FREE and most of the time they have a huge choice, from almost-full giant tubs to tiny sample pots in a vast range of colours; we picked up a virtually-full large tin of Farrow & Ball a couple of weeks ago. And most of the paint we found to use in our kitchen is low-VOC, so you may well find suitable paint for households with asthmatics/young children too. If you only need a little, it saves you having to buy a bigger pot than you need. There’s woodstain too; my bantam hutch is done out in a fetching shade of Woodland Green, having found a half-pot down there, which was all I needed, so the only thing that cost me any money at all was the hinges. They can’t advertise, for commercial reasons, so please make it your first port-of-call when you’re looking for paint; then tell all your friends, and point out that it’s the environmentally-sound thing to do!

Black gold…

thriftwizard2 Comments

Picture the scene: a green English country lane, dozing gently in the weak spring sunshine. Buds on the trees, but no leaves yet to impede the birdsong flooding down from the trees and cascading over the ebullient roadside daffodils. And along drifts a big Japanese car, slowly, erratically, pausing at every gateway. The driver looks quizzically at the front-seat passenger; she shakes her head sorrowfully and on they go. Then feverish excitement  breaks out; there’s the object of their quest, just visible tucked in beside the next gateway. The car draws up and out they tumble, bags in hand. Eagerly they approach their objective, and the transfer takes place; empty bags are tucked underneath the waiting brick, and full bags placed reverently onto an old rug in the back of the car.  The car backs up & swings round, then off they go, faster now, conveying their precious cargo back home to the waiting beneficiaries… happy roses, plump beans, glowing red & blackcurrants! Black gold, well-rotted horsemuck…

So you can imagine how happy I was to find a box full of plastic compost sacks down at the Tip late last week. I didn’t take them all, just enough to fill my boot up one more time, which should, mixed with my homemade compost, fill my motley assortment of containers, ranging from builder’s bags and gigantic Woolworths plastic tubs to aged terracotta flowerpots. And that will give us vegetables, saladings and even some flowers this summer, given a little sunshine! I have been mending the plastic “walk-in growhouse” and we’ve planted lots of seeds in well re-used trays and pots; tomato seedlings are already showing their heads in my secondhand propagator.

Inside, as well as trying my hand at spinning mohair, I’ve been planning my charkha. I found a box that used to hold projector slides, and some usable bits from a tiny old Saxonia sewing machine that was far beyond hope of resurrection. Add some old cotton reels, a knitting needle, and the gadget that turns the belt of an electric sewing machine, and it’s beginning to look like this is do-able… I shall need to cut a plywood circle and somehow attach two CDs to it to make the big half of the accelerator wheel, and work out what I’m looking for to use for drive bands, but can I have it finished before the end of this week? Watch this space…

Potential charkha?
Potential charkha?

What a week for wombling in Wimborne!

thriftwizardLeave a comment

An excellent haul…

For a long time, we’ve needed a pair of bi-fold doors to fit across the opening from our tiny living room into our rather large conservatory. Single doors would have taken up too much living space, whichever way they opened. But I’d found it very hard to find readymade doors that fitted in with the style of the house, and bespoke doors were horrendously expensive. But bless their cotton socks, those fine gentlemen at Wimborne Household Recycling centre have done it again! There, before my very eyes on Monday, were a matched pair of sturdy pine bifold doors, with glassed-in uppers so we won’t lose too much light. I’m not too struck on the pattern on the glass, but it’s liveable and the girls actually like it. And it might be removeable, or we could just replace it altogether if it really grates. So all we need now is the hanging kit, which is a little more than £20 at B&Q – much more manageable than the £400 we thought we were going to have to save up. They need painting, to blend in with our decor and add to the (entirely theoretical) impression of space; I will post a pic when they’re done & up. Next cold snap, we’ll be laughing…

As I was clucking happily over the doors, someone offloaded a tent and drove off. Recognising the colours and the style of the bag, I inspected more closely; it was a Khyam Ultradome. Probably a couple of years younger than our old, much-loved Megadome but not as hard-used, it looked to be in decent shape so was popped into the capacious back of my Toyota Emina along with the lovely convertible (treadle/electric) Singer 201K in its oak cabinet. The Singer will be going off to Africa with TWAM, as will the almost-identical one picked up from a goodhearted Freecycler earlier on today. The Khyam will be going off to Devon with us inside! It’s a whole lot smaller & lighter than our big Gelert tunnel tent to transport, without being much smaller inside, and very much easier to pitch.

I have had it up in the garden for a closer look today, and apart from a small, easily mended rip on the porch, it’s in pretty good shape. The original guy ropes are gone, but we have a set of proper Khyam guys & pegs from our faithful old friend the Megadome. I shan’t feel so bad about taking that  apart now, as it will be helping this one give many more years of service, and since one leg strut got snapped by someone who didn’t understand how to pop them down, it really is past it now.  I’ll use some fabric from it to mend that rip, and take the integral groundsheet out to use in the living area of the Ultradome, which didn’t come with one. That’s one reason why we bought the Mega rather than the Ultradome, 13 years ago – you had to buy it seperately if you wanted one, and the tent cost well over £400 to start with…

So I’m happy with that, and with the biggish enamel saucepan (with lid) I kidnapped for dyeing in, the two little mesh windows from someone’s larder which will make fabulous deckles for papermaking & the little old ratchet screwdriver that ought to go off to Africa but which seems to have slipped somehow into my sewing machine tool box and obviously feels quite at home.

And I’m definitely beginning to get the hang of spinning now, and am turning out skeins of yarn that I actually want to work with. The dyeing & spinning experiments are going to be made into a “Granny Square” jumper – will I have it finshed in time to wear it next winter? Or will I be distracted by 101 other irresistible projects, like making myself a charkha out of a small, rescued box and parts from an old Saxonia sewing machine that really was at the end of its useful life? Watch this space for regular updates…

Have I gone too far this time?

thriftwizardLeave a comment

On our way to pick up next winter’s egg supply today (as day-old chicks, to pop under my broody Pekin bantams) I spotted a dead pheasant at the side of the road. Nothing unusual at this time of year in the Dorset countryside, but this one was at the end of a layby, so would be easily reachable without danger from speeding traffic. I said to the girls, “If he’s still there on the way back, he’d make a good supper tonight…” Cue squawks of teenage horror…

Much to my surprise, he was still there, so I pulled into the layby, nipped out and had a quick look. Well dead, but still warm; no signs of decomposition or illness. So into the boot of the car he went…

And indeed he has made the most delicious meal, in a home-made Chasseur sauce, with baked potatos, bulgur wheat and stir-fried kale. But half the family, the male half at that, are being exceptionally fussy and refusing to eat him.

It’s not as if it’ll make any difference to him now, is it? He very clearly died of colliding with a car, nothing more sinister or infectious than that, and he’s been well-cooked to be on the safe side. My Other Half maintains that his mortal remains would have fed umpteen small creatures of the night, but I suspect they would instead have been a deathtrap for them, lying in the path of on oncoming traffic in the dark. I for one am grateful for his little life and untimely death; his bones are boiling for stock right now and his glorious feathers will adorn some of our textile projects. And it’s not as if we killed him ourselves…

Anyway, I’m proud of my daughters, for helping to prepare him without a fuss in the end. And I don’t really mind my fusspot males not eating; all the more for us tomorrow!

These proud mothers think chicks hatch from a cardboard box...
These proud mothers think chicks hatch from a cardboard box...

Everything comes to she who waits…

thriftwizardLeave a comment

I popped into the Tip this morning to see whether any sewing machines had come in over the weekend; with the economic downturn, the flood of old beauties has slowed to a trickle as people begin to realise that they may actually still be useful. Lee greeted me with, “I’ve found something for you! Look behind the Metal bin!” And there, to my great delight, was the exact size of grill needed to restore our firepit to full functionality. Not that we’ll be eating out in the garden for a few weeks, but as this season’s seeds start to go in, winter’s cool grey chill is starting to recede and there’s suddenly so much to look forward to, in the house, in the garden and out in our beautiful countryside…

Not that I’ve been idle in the dark evenings. I asked everyone to give me money for my birthday and Christmas presents, and put it towards a very secondhand Louet S20 spinning wheel, which has been helping me make a small dent in the huge pile of Freecycled fleeces in our porch. I’m rather pleased with the resulting yarn, though I’ve yet to put it to good use and actually make something with it. I’ve joined our local Spinners & Weavers Guild, as they do lots of other things I’m interested in too, like Kumihimo, rag rugs and felting. We’re experimenting with dyeing, both chemical and natural, as part of the girls’ educational adventures this term, and some of the shorter fibres are going into felt. So this is how I’ve spent some of my evenings this week:

 

Dorset Down fleece with Dorset Featherstitching...
Dorset Down fleece with Dorset Featherstitching...
They’re made from felted Dorset Down fleece, lined with leftover polar fleece, soled with suede from the Scrapstore and stitched, firstly by machine on a rescued “Light Industrial” Singer 15 from 1895 using Scrapstore upholstery thread, then Dorset Featherstitched by hand with hand-dyed thread recycled from a gone-wrong jewellery project. Didn’t cost a penny!