recycling

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!

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...

Been MIA for a bit…

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…and “missing in ACTION” it certainly has been. My feet haven’t touched the ground for the last couple of months, but it’s been great. You know you’re actually reaching people when someone walks into your shop and the first thing they say is, “Aha! That’s the very sofa itself! I read about that on your blog!” And indeed she (and her husband too) have spent some time cosily esconced on said sofa, over the last few days, weaving happily away on their new-to-them peg loom and cutting rags into strips.

I’m just beginning to find my feet now and find a little time for writing – which is just as well, as I have an article to write before going off on holiday. It may seem a little perverse, trotting off on holiday just when things were getting off the ground, but believe me, I need it…

I’ve been surprised and delighted by how I do seem to have found a real gap in the market; people are genuinely pleased to find affordable stuff and somewhere they can just try things out. They may already be expert-level at, say, P&Q, but wanting to have a go at crochet, without committing to weeks of lessons or a jumper’s-worth of yarn. Or professional cardmakers who’ve always wanted to try their hand at knitting. I’ve done a whole lot of wet-felting, too; seems to be the one thing everyone wants a go at, even people who’ve done it many times before!

Here’s a link to a nice tribute from one of my friends – great to see you last week, Carrie! – and here’s one to our local newspaper’s account. And below is something I made earlier… it’s great to have some time & space just to sit & make things, and a good excuse to do so!

Not so daft after all…

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Last week I was lurking around on Ebay looking at sofas for my new shop. I’ve been looking for weeks, and nothing even vaguely right had turned up; everything was the wrong shape or colour, the wrong size, or just plain too expensive. No way was I buying something new, either. So when I saw a reasonably-coloured, comfy-looking suite in the next town at 99p with a day to run, I whacked in a bid. Seconds later I realised that it didn’t say that it had fire labels, or that it was from a smoke-free home, & my heart sank. I emailed the seller and they replied that it did in fact have fire labels, but they didn’t say anything about smoke… oh well, I thought, it’s only 99p even if I have to take it straight to the tip. But let it be a lesson to myself not to haunt Ebay late at night when my judgement’s gone to sleep!

Well, we picked it up today. When we got the two chairs into the unit, it was apparent that although it had clearly been enjoying family life for a few years, the covers were still intact & it was actually still extremely comfortable & supportive. And when we manhandled the very-solid sofa in, my friend said, “You know, I’m beginning to suspect that this may have cost a bob or two originally…”

We found £3.37 down the sides, along with several little plastic men, keyrings and crayons, so it has paid for itself already if you don’t count the fuel cost of going to get it. And we found the maker’s label & were able to identify it; it’s a Multiyork Gloucester large sofa & two chairs, currently retailing at a minimum of £3590.

That could be the best 99p investment I’ve ever made…

What a difference…

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…a day makes! Well, yesterday, anyway; it quite restored my faith in what I’m doing. I took my VintageCraftStuff stall to Boscombe Vintage Market yesterday. And despite the fact that it was the first time I’d done a stall there, and really didn’t know how to “pitch” it, I did very well. I’d been worried that on a cold & blowy early February day, in a tent in an inner-city area, it’d be touch & go whether I’d clear the pitch fee plus my fuel costs getting there. I needn’t have worried; I got a lot of positive feedback! So I was quite happy to hand over the pitch fee for next month & will be putting that up on the VCS Events page ASAP. But I can’t help contrasting it with the big, centuries-old market in my little home town. I can understand the logisitics of mixing us crafters in with other stall holders in the “dead” period between Christmas & Easter and closing down the end hall that we were in. But if I’m placed in between say, a cosmetics stall with everything in shiny packages and a stall full of cheap plastic “bankrupt stock” kitchenware, my lovely old sewing machines and intriguing vintage knitting patterns are in danger of looking like a heap of old junk, no matter how pretty the stall looks, dressed in red velvet, wicker & lace. Not to mention the probability of having to lug heavy kit through crowded halls some distance from where you’re parked; in the end hall the logisitics were easy and the company good.

But the main difference was in the customers. There are some lovely appreciative people here, and some loyal supporters, but there are also a significant number of people who aren’t afraid to make comments like, “Been going through the bins, then?” or “Thank heavens we don’t have to do that sort of thing any longer!” I know from public Morsbagging sessions that many of them will have had unfortunate experiences long ago, of having been humiliated & told they were “useless” in front of their friends in Domestic Science or DT classes, but being rude about someone else’s hard work really doesn’t make life better for anyone. The fact that a proportion of my stock does actually come from the Recycling Centre doesn’t mean that it’s worthless (or that I didn’t pay anything for it, either) but that as a society, we’ve lost the plot and are quite prepared to junk items of real value & lasting beauty in favour of new plastic stuff with an expected lifespan of 5 years, if you’re lucky! Not all new stuff is “”bad” and not all old stuff is “good” but the reverse isn’t automatically true either. I think that says what I wanted to…

And the attitude seems to be reflected in our town’s general way of going about things. It’s becoming a hard slog to continue to try to keep the Transition spark alive in a town that seems to think it really doesn’t have to worry about things like that. Retail rents & rates are such that it’s virtually impossible to start up a genuine local initiative; I know there has been & probably still is a drive to attract upmarket chain stores to the town by the well-meaning, vocal, middle class, upper-income bracket people who think that easy access to a branch of Marks & Spencers will solve any problems that Peak Oil & Climate Change might bring. So rents are kept high in order to attract “the right sort of business” and fledgling local businesses have to go elsewhere or seek huge bank loans. And surprise, surprise, attracting a well-known posh supermarket to our town has NOT increased takings for our genuine local shops, who were amongst the prime movers in the campaign to bring them here, but depressed them. Our youngsters think there isn’t any point even trying; they know they’ll never be able to afford to buy homes or run businesses here and that’s the saddest thing of all. Our future’s going elsewhere…

I had a lot of young, enthusiastic customers yesterday, many of them students at the Arts Institute, and lots of thoughtful, creative, appreciative older ones too, in an area that most people here think of as a bit run-down and grim. All I can say is that Wimborne really, really needs to wake up…

I promised…

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…that the next one would be made entirely with recycled materials. And here it is! Old seersucker tablecoths, and a couple of shirts, to be precise. All gleaned from charity shops or the Tip; the batting is a fleece baby blanket that someone had no further use for, although it was as good as new & could easily have been donated to a charity shop. But it wasn’t…  The thread (two colours only) was rescued from old sewing machines or sewing boxes & was still strong, the backing & self-binding was a length of calico that used to line our kitchen curtains and the ribbon came from a whole roll that turned up in a Freecycled sewing box.  It’s a cot-size “strippy-raggy” quilt, for want of a precise description! Fun & very quick to make, but also very textural & soft from a baby’s point of view.

I had fun with the machine quilting, as you can see, and tried out lots of different “patterns”. Some were much easier than others. Bear in mind that my 1909 Jones Medium treadle is extremely easy to use, but only goes forwards and doesn’t automatically adjust stitch lengths or automatically do anything at all except look cheerful!

All in all I’m rather pleased with it & may have to make several more – if only because I now have a big bag of seersucker strips in a wide variety of colours!

Wok about this, then?

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20p cabbage, free wok...

For some time I have been stashing oddments of kitchenware in my porch; I knew that as the Offspring started to wander off, they’d need bits n’bobs and it seems daft to buy new, cheap stuff that will fall apart & need replacing in no length of time, when they could have decent cookware to experiment with that’s actually cost even less, it’s just not brand new. Two of them have flown the nest lately and both have taken some of the stash off to their student kitchens. In fact, they’re not the first to do so; a couple of friends have raided the stash in times of dire need in the past, too, so I’m glad I’ve had the space free to store it.

Needless to say, virtually all of the items in it have been unwanted & unloved by their previous owners. It includes Le Creuset & Cousances cast-iron casseroles, frying pans and saucepans, stainless steel saucepans, a stainless steel pressure cooker, Pyrex bowls & dishes, Sabatier knives, a Spong mincer and goodness knows how many other things that originally cost a fortune, as well as things that haven’t cost so much but are still very usable, useful and hard to track down like glass lemonsqueezers. Today, the stash currently being devoid of woks, I rescued a virtually brand-new Ken Hom carbon-steel wok from the arms of its previous owner. “I’m afraid it’s no use now, ” she said sadly. “My daughter’s burnt the non-stick coating and it started to come off when we tried to clean it…”

Hmmm – a good soak in bicarb soon loosened the rest of the burnt food, then I’m afraid I set about it with wire wool! I don’t like Teflon-coated cookware & it doesn’t like me, either; the non-stick coating has been known to peel off on the way home from the shop. I think it knows what I have in store for it… Anyway, I scrubbed away as much as I could, washed it all off thoroughly and wiped the wok with clean cooking oil, which I carefully & gently burnt on over half an hour or so, then cooled it and repeated the process a couple more times. This produces a natural non-stick coating which will develop as the wok is used, provided you don’t wash it with detergent; a scrub with a dishcloth in steaming hot water is all that’s required.

I also rescued from the same lady an armful of biscuit tins. Every time we visit one or other of our students, they politely ask whether we might happen to be able to supply some of their sister’s famed Chocolate Fudge Brownies. So we do, gladly – but we never seem to get the tins back! I think we’ll have to institute a tin-return scheme. But at least we’ve got some in reserve now.

Then on a quick trip up to town today, we happened to hit the moment when one of the supermarkets had just massively reduced all of its on-the-sell-by produce. So into the new wok went a 20p cabbage & 10p worth of spring onions, along with a little fresh kale left over from the weekend. 40p worth of new potatos in herb butter and a pack of very-tasty giant sausages that cost just £1.25 completed a satisfyingly inexpensive meal.

My older daughter has just challenged me to feed the family (currently numbering 5, all of adult size, give or take a couple on any given night) for a week on £50. I might just take her up on that…

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

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It’s been quite a long time since I was able to sit comfortably, in fact. Not going on about my operation again; but the fact that our old computer chair has actually been caput for quite some time, But somehow you get used to thing as they are, and put up with it, long past the point where you know you should do something about it, even when it’s actually causing you quite some discomfort… there’s a metaphor for our consumer/industrial society in there somewhere! And probably all kinds of other dilemmas, too. But it takes a catalyst; either the collapse of the old, or something falling at your feet that’s so obviously much better, to force you to do something about it. I did consider buying a new kneeler just before my op., but never got round to it as there were so many other things clamouring for my attention.

And that’s exactly what has happened. A couple of days ago, I smuggled a bootload of stained, holey, tatty clothing off to the Tip. I felt a little uncomfortable disposing of it the easy way, but I’ve got enough rags just now, and more than enough fabric, so it’s gone off to be professionally recycled. As you do, or I do, at any rate, I had a quick look at other people’s now-surplus-to-requirements offerings, and there, towards the back, was a decent, sturdy kneeling chair. I know they don’t suit everyone, but they do suit me; my back has been deeply grateful for the whole idea ever since I first had one at work, back when I was expecting no. 1 son. So the princely sum of £2 duly changed hands, and the chair came back with me.

Now it’s under my knees as I type, and suddenly I’m no longer slumped uncomfortably in front of the screen, but alert and upright again. Although it’s a bog-standard black office kneeler, rather than the pretty little wooden one we had last, that was too small for any of us (and I’m not exactly tall) the whole room looks bigger, lighter & tidier without the grimy, tatty, broken offering we’d been putting up with, without ever really noticing how decrepit & uncomfortable it had become. It’s still here, and I can’t help noticing that no-one has sat on it for any length of time since I moved it out from under the desk, so it will go on its way tomorrow. Hopefully it will be recycled into something longer-lived & more pleasing to the eye next time!
Now there’s still a systems analyst lurking somewhere at the back of my mind, even after all these years. I don’t know how I’d managed to forget that something as basic & fundamental as the way that I sit has a huge knock-on effect on how I feel and how much I can get done. And that it’s the chair that dictates how I sit, no matter how good my intentions of sitting upright under any conditions, just as the fit of your shoes dictates how you walk – or not.

 

Which kind of leads me to a dichotomy; sometimes utilising whatever turns up for any given job isn’t the best idea. Just as I wasted a lot of electricity trying to use wildly-inappropriate Freecycled cookers when our old one finally broke down beyond repair, I’ve wasted a lot of my own muscle-power, and probably a few headaches too, counteracting the effect of a chair that was a bad “fit” for me, and probably everyone else here too. So I need to use my powers of discrimination a little more, and accept that sometimes I will have to buy new, or wait until the absolutely-right thing for the job turns up. And the chair that I’m kneeling on right now is proof that sometimes, it does, but the fact that I don’t have any trainers and I seem to be putting on weight means that sometimes, it doesn’t…

Sometimes less is more…

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…and perhaps this week has been proof of that, on the recycling front. I have only managed two forays, thanks to my still-recovering hip and other commitments; one to the Tip and one to a nearby car boot sale. But both outings were well worthwhile.

At the tip, I found some oddments of textiles needed to complete a couple of projects I heve on the go, including a fair few metres of curtain fabric still on the roll, ideal for Morsbagging. Also a complete game of Absolute Balderdash – that’ll keep us happy for a few evenings!

At the car boot sale (outside Wimborne Market on a Saturday morning) the first thing my eyes alighted on was pure treasure; an apple press. I know I already have one, but I’d been racking my brains to think of a way to raise some money for TTWimborne to buy a fruit press. Obviously, for public use, we’ll need a bigger one, and will have to fundraise; however, I’d just found out we have been allowed a stall at the Minster Fair on the Minster Green during the Folk Festival this year. What could be better than raffling (or some kind of contest, if they have stern rules about games of chance) a household-sized apple press? I know from experience how hard they are to come by and how many people would love one  – hopefully they’ll think risking a pound for a ticket is a good investment, especially as that pound will be going towards a bigger one for community use, so if they don’t win, they will at least have that to look forward to!

Then at one of the house clearance stalls, I found a bag containing several pairs of bamboo knitting needles & other oddments. He wanted several ££s, which half of me thought was too much, but it was still early in the morning’s trading & he didn’t look to be in bargaining mode, so I paid up. When I got home, I found to my delight that most the the bamboo needles were still in their packets, and thus saleable from my own stall or web shop, AND there were three sets of circular metal needles, also still in their wrappings, AND a box full of Simanco fashion cams, AND oodles of old lace snippets! I shall be uploading them (and lots of other things too) early on this week, whenever I’m not planting up my hanging baskets or front garden.

On Tuesday, Wimborne played host to Steph Bradley, who is walking the length & breadth of England telling & gathering Transition Tales. I met her at Canford Bridge and gave her lunch & a chance to rest her feet a bit before meandering through Wimborne to meet up with Tom from the Gaunt’s House community, where she was staying the night – read about it from Steph’s viewpoint here. And what a lovely, sparkly entertaining lady she is!

And last but not least, the chicken saga continues; I have had two broodies sitting for 6+ weeks. I didn’t think they’d stay put at first because it was so cold, so I didn’t arrange any hybrid chicks for them. But they sat it out, and just over four weeks ago, I was at a friend’s house who keeps a cock bird, so I begged some hopefully-fertile eggs from her and popped them under. But sadly, one of the broodies at least was turfed off the nest by someone looking for a space to lay in sometime in the first few days, and when I candled the eggs at 7 days development, two were obviously clear. I couldn’t see much in the other two because they were blue eggs, but one did look a bit darker – maybe it had a thicker shell? Anyway, day 21 came & went with no hatchlings, then day 22, day 23, etc. I was a bit worried that they’d starve, so on day 27, the first day I had any spare time, I rang round the local breeders, located one (Race Farm Poultry – thank you, Shelley!) with day-olds, and went & bought 4 best-guess-female pure breed chicks for them.

I left the warm box peeping in the shed for an hour, to get the girls used to the idea of impending motherhood, then slipped two chicks under each broody, removing the “blank” eggs, all but one. That evening, I went to take the last egg away, so that Nutmeg would be free to bring her chicks out the  next day. But horrors! There was only half a shell – oh no, I thought, it’s burst & the chicks will get infected & die! But there was no foul smell… I lifted Nutmeg up slightly, and there were altogether too many legs… THREE chicks! The last egg had hatched, at 27 days. Maybe the little sturdy, stripey chick inside needed to hear the other chicks cheeping around it before it found the strength to break out? Or maybe it incubated really slowly because  of the cold weather in the first couple of weeks? Who knows… but it’s a lovely healthy chick all the same.

The Silkin, Nutmeg & surprise legbarX chick...