Going old fashioned with polishing

 Remember this?

Its the sort of thing my mother would have had in her cupboard and I can't even remember why I brought it but it must have been at least 8 years ago judging by the price label. This week it was dug out of the shed and came it to its own!

To explain. We have been renovating our en suite and my one insistence was the radiator had to go.  It was a alongside the loo and so close your thigh got burnt if you stayed too long in the winter. Husband says he is getting a smaller loo (at great cost more than a standard one) but can't move it over.   So the bathroom suite and radiator have come out. In our good environmental ways we re cycled (Free); the loo and washbasin, which beside size had nothing wrong with them, via the local Facebook group to someone's daughter renovating a very down at heel house in a very deprived area of the nearby town.  But the radiator was a bitty tatty, mostly as you could never had maintained it as to was too close to the loo!

Over a couple of days I spent a couple of hours washing it off, using the above to give it a shine and using the wet kitchen foil trick to renovate the chrome.

It went on the Facebook site and was soon gone. 

I was impressed with the deep shine of the Silvo wadding on chrome ever since I have been wandering round the house putting a lovely shine on all bits and pieces - bathroom radiator, taps, chrome legs of TV stand, chrome light switch covers, door handles, oven handle........  Obviously nothing silver in this house to practise on as we not rich enough for anything in precious metals beyond the wedding ring!

Better shine than I have got for years with any of the spray stuff. Can't beat the old fashioned ways can you?

Opps, really bad hording.

We've brought a GroPro to use making videos for our YouTube channels. Yeah! But it means more leads and tech in the house. I went to find a label to put on the lead and would not get mixed up with the hundreds of others in that big box under the desk.

Put my hand in the stationary drawer and located some pretty coloured ones. Errrr..... Do you recognise these?

Yes. They are. Labels that used to go on those 31/2" hard shell computer disks! Invented 1981 and lost to progress by end of the 1990s.

Now that is a really really bad hoarding habit.

Some inventive re or up cycling

I am always on the look out for re cycling or up cycling where ever we go. So on holiday in Funcal (Maderia) last week I spotted 3 interesting "art" ideas.

Firstly the giant fish made of collected rubbish. It was well done and the nature of the materials really fitted the shape and colours needed in the sculpture. The eye for example was a yellow building site safety hat. What was strange was seeing it along side one of the 13 cruise ships in and out of the harbour that week. This was a "small" one. Monstrous things. Having been brought up around Southampton in the good old days when ships looked like ships (original QE and QM for example) I find these blocks of flats afloat an affront. One cruise ship was plastered with its green credentials as it was run on natural gas! 

Along one of the narrow roads (read alleyway in UK terms) there was blank wall hung with giant bunting. What a good idea! Fabric bunting would have been too small, faded quickly in the sun and not had the same effect. These were odd bits of ply board painted and hung along a painted line.  We have a blank wooden fence which is worse for wear and I am thinking it would cheer our summer view up a lot to do this!

Outside an art gallery some painted tins had been wired up to take plants. They were nice big tins (saw them in supermarket for peaches) They looked great. Or was it the fact the wall was brightly painted too?

Full of flu since returning(thanks to delayed flight with terrible air quality/cross country crowded trains) and despite some nice sunshine outside my outlook is grey, grey, grey....

Potatoes are in

Some may think its a little early, but we live in a very dry part of East Anglia and have found if we leave it till  Easter (the traditional time to plant potatoes) then the soil at depth has already dried out too much.

My husband borrowed this hand drawn ridger from our ancient neighbour to make the furrows and then go back down and make the ridges. The sub soil was damp, but full of worms, and the top loose and dry.  We ended up with 5 and a half rows. 2 First early and the rest Main crop. the last row was a mix of all the left over little ones from each of the main crop bags.  That left half a row in this first veg bed. So I re dug it to make sure their was no couch grass, thistles or docks and planted some spinach. Not done this outside before (we have done it in poly tunnel previously) but we were watching Charles Dowdling You Tube on spinach and he recommended this method outside and planting the whole module with no thinning. You pick the spinach leaves at a very small and young stage. So far, looking good but as it has not rained for a few weeks and the water butts up veg end are empty I have been trolling up and down from the house end with watering cans from those butts to bed the spinach in.

In the next plot my husband has planted 4 rows of onions grown from seeds and they are taking well and making good progress.  They enjoy the sunny open area.

In other bits of the veg beds we are trying to be much more no dig. I have been experimenting with putting some thick plastic on top of the autumn dug soil which is already showing invasive weeds - speedwell and thistles.

After 3 weeks I went back for a look. The thistles were up but spindly and loose, the speedwell had lost its grip on the soil and were easy to get the whole thing up (rather than it snapping at the base and leaving the roots to re grow).  So a quick surface turn over and re-cover and I will probably plant some beetroot there as there is just enough space between the brassica netted area and the garlic on the right. We are doing beetroot in the Charles Dowdling method to give them a head start - several in each module and then just plant them as a whole and thin as they grow.

Lots of heavy work this week in the veg garde, plus the fence is finally repaired.

Ok, not pretty and, yes, that metal joining piece is part of a big hinge off the old outside loo door! One day I will paint this side of the fence, or, I am going to cover it with climbing plants. The latter may be difficult as on our side, it is actually an old horse menage with 3 foot of sand under that grass so we would have to make containers at regular intervals to plant in.

Lovely day today and looking forward to some sewing time this weekend.  I have just been to the village to get some bread and on the way back cleared up some litter in the verges, then as I neared our house I wondered what this brown lump was in the middle of the road.

It was someone's MacDonald's breakfast bag!!! It had not been there when I went out 15 minutes earlier. Put photo on the village Facebook page straight away with the hopes of shaming them.

Few flurries of snow

It is cold but our frosts so far have been light and the snow no more than one 20 min flurry.  Still cold out there so been trundling around indoors for what feels like days and days.  Except when I went to post a birthday card and took the opportunity to go up the footpath through the village churchyard. Bit muddy but could be pleasant in the summer.  Next time I will take my camera.

For Xmas we were given 4 of these micro-wavable bowls with plastic lids. They have pop up round bits that let out the steam.  Reheated some shepherds pie and some sponge pudding and custard yesterday and they worked a treat.  Must write to the person who gave us the gift with thanks.

We have had a curtain across our front door for ages but it really was not a good fit and this last week the drafts were noticeable.  I remembered I had a length of not very exciting stone coloured upholstery fabric stashed away so I dug it out and made a new curtain.  Not quite enough matching ribbon for all the ties to go round the curtain pole above the door so reused the old blue ones until I am in town again.

I have been taking 20 to 30 minutes out of the day to put a second coat of white emulsion on the walls of the kitchen.  I have been doing it in sections as doing any thing in a kitchen is disruptive to meal prep!  We still have not got the tiles for the windowsill and I was fed up with the grotty bit of plastic protecting the sill and splash back.  I decided to sacrifice a length of a wipe clean PVC coated tablecloth we use on the dinning table (its too big anyway) and it makes a very pleasant alternative to the missing tiles.

My laptop is getting worse. (nearly 10 years old) Its right click to do spellcheck will not load, Soon my posts will be gibbberish.

Fabric boxes

I have been spending some of these cold afternoons learning how to make fabric boxes and working on altering the design from SheCanSew blog I started off with.   The stripy one has iron on stiff interfacing, on the ends there are "slots" to fasten the folded in ends together and is finished by zigzagging on all the edges. 

Doing in it with two fat quarters and especially purchased stiff interfacing and all the cotton for the edges made it quite expensive.  I was really looking for an easy way to use up stash and recycled materials to make cheap storage  solutions.  I had a look on You Tube for more ideas too.

The box on the left I made the same size overall, but started by putting the right sides together and stitching all round before turning and quilting.  That meant cutting into the piece to make the flaps and making turned in edges which was a fiddle as much as making the slots.  When I folded it up occurred to me that I could put a button on the inside flap and then made buttonholes through the other two.  

My third attempt was to use a very stiff denim material and face it with a poly-cotton fabric. It stands up well on its own and does not need extra quilting. I tried out using ties to fasten the ends of the box. It seems to work quite well. 

I am going to road test these fabric boxes before publishing a pattern.

Two good products

I am not paid to endorse products (would not have a clue how to do such a thing) but these two products have sparked my support.

I had a few "not so good" sponge cakes so I tried some different ingredients. Upgraded the basics margarine for Stork and the own brand flour for specialty sponge flour.

The flour has really resulted in a nice texture and taste.  Bit more expensive but for treats worth the extra costs.

I also found my own brand dishwasher tablets had been improved. 

The tablets are now wrapped in something that does not need removing. So no more foil or thick plastic wraps to take off, annoying to handle  and  I don't like getting the dish washer stuff on my hands.  As this is a cardboard box it means the product is 100% recycled. I know the loose powder in a plastic bottle is probably cheaper but then you have potential for spills and another plastic bottle to recycle.

I do product reviews on the supermarket shop and gave good feedback for these. I also joined a customer campaign to get the plastic packaging on own brand porridge replaced with a paper based one. They had about a 100 review comments mainly saying the same thing. Hope it works.

Wrapping presents

Just done the small presents for the immediate family.  We keep to a £10 per person budget and keep it light as we have to carry them across London!!  Some times we wait and skip down to their south London local High Street which has twice as many shops as our small town.

Now that we have all been firmly told that the gold glittery wrapping paper is non recyclable I have finally finished up the roll I have had for 2 or 3 years  and won't be buying again.  A lot of people  are going for brown paper.   I have decided my giant roll of brown paper (£1) and the rolls of red ribbon from The Works sale (£1 for 3) is the way to go. The tags are last year's Xmas cards.

Bit boring though???  Printing with acrylics and foam roller did not work - so decided some drawing was the way to go.

Slightly screwiff?

I attacked my second hand material stash the other day and cleared a lot of stuff out the other day and cut a lot into strips to make one of my rag rugs. Plenty of choice but a first there was a lot maroon sweatshirts.

I wanted a smallish square to go under my sewing table to keep my feet warm but something went a bit wrong when I stitched the plaits together. Probably not paying attention as I was watching TV at the time.

More of a parallelogram.  I will have to square it up a bit somehow.  My gardening fleece has just  broken its zip so I am thinking of using it to make a fringe or binding. I will turn the fleece inside out as the outside has paint splats and is faded.  I have recently found quite a few things are better used inside out - often the colour is better and smoother surface.

At the end I felt I had recycled 80% of the old clothes that were not even suitable for charity shop donation. I still ended up with a pile of bits (collars, seams, etc). .  I was watching one of the programmes about pollution and rubbish heaps the other day and they showed a 1970s dump with clothes that were still whole and recognizable. Apparently modern fabrics don't break down?   Back in the old days there would be a man with a cart, the "shoddy man",  who gave my old Granny a few shillings for bags of rags.  But in those days it would have been wool or cotton fabric - not polyester etc.

Owl recycling

Another rumble through the box of worn out 2/3 year old clothes from my grandson and the internet for ideas I came up with an owl cushion pattern.

I have used mostly two cute sports kits from (expensive) rugby for toddlers club he did for a while. The wings are the sleeves of two of those all in one swimming costumes ( whatever happened to swimming trunks?).

The pattern was a free download through Craftsy .  I went wrong with the wings but achieved a rescue.  I also used batting to quilt the features on the front to give it more shape.  I thought the 4 inch wide band that joins the front to the back owl shape would be the most difficult but it turned out to work really well.

As it was a gift and not being sold I did not have to do the safety checks on children's toys. Though I will warn the parents that it is not fire proof (non smoking, underfloor heated house so no real risks there).   I cut an old pillow in half expecting to use the foam or fibre filling as stuffing and found it had a thick foam layer in the middle.

Never seen that before. No wonder this old pillow had been shoved to one side as uncomfortable. Still this foam layer was actually just right for giving the owl a move rigid structure.

So some more recycling achieved and a cheerful cushion on the spare room bed ready for their next visit.

Upcycling play equipment

I have been fascinated all summer by the afternoon TV programme Find it, fix it, flog it about upcycling stuff  as the presenters do the work themselves and often very cheaply.  I was taken with the idea of using spray paint on all sorts of surfaces (including plastic?) which I had previously thought was not possible and difficult.  So when we got our hands on some free but faded children's play equipment I thought this is worth a try out.

I brought a "rattle can"  for £4 in Wilco and had a go at an old scooter first which was faded red and yellow with odd stickers. I wrapped the wheels and handle bars in newspaper fastened with masking tape.  Three light goes at spraying later, leaving it to dry in the sun and it looked quite good. Should I have done the purple front "forks" on the front wheel?

I have some red and blue tape from husband's shed that can be added if grandchildren want to make "go faster stripes" later.

The swing will be a much bigger job but I feel much more confident.  Husband will welcome this as he thinks the pink is a bit out of synch with his sophisticated garden designs (Ha Ha).

Upcycling rugby shirts for 2/3year olds

My son sent a box of grandson's 2/3 year old clothes for me to play with in my sewing room. Quite  a few rugby shirts like this.

He really loved this style and wore these shirts a lot so they were very washed out and some stains!

I choose two in slightly different red and blue strips and turned them into quite a large stuffed elephant. You can get quite a bit of material out of these shirts as they had long sleeves!

Pattern from the internet, stuffing is a mostly an old pillow innards and some left over batting for the trunk and feet.

I shall have to offer to do the same for the other son's two if they want to save memories.

Wigwam or Tepee?

Last year I made the grandkids 3 hobby horses on broomsticks for the summer holidays. This year I made them a wigwam. My son called it a tepee.  My 4 year old grandkids  called it a tent and had no idea of a cultural background. Wild west or "Cowboy and Indian" films obviously not on CBBC or Tiny Pop or these other channels??

It was made of 4 of my husbands best giant thick bamboo poles (not needed as we were only going for one row of runner beans this year) and four cloth triangles. I used one half of a white king sized duvet and a long length of thin black cotton dress material (donated free to me) from my stash. No great loss as it was so thin it was no good for dresses and I had already had 3 blouses out of it.  So cost nothing except a few afternoons puzzling out the mechanics.  Secured at top with string in a hem and made a door way by splitting one triangle and putting a facing on it with odd ribbons sewn in to fasten up.  I did sew heavy washers into the corners thinking I could use the wire hoops from the veg netting to pin the sides but the ground was too hard and this was last piece of green grass in the garden.  So I made a hem in the excess material round the bases and threaded in some old roofing battens from the scrap/fire wood pile on three sides which held it out nicely as long as it was not too windy. Old bed covers for sitting on  and stretching out to provide a play patio.

It went down very well, as you can see the giant lego stuff was out here and not all over lounge floor to trip up Granddad. Teddy spent time in the tent and often came flying out. It was a good shady place to send one fractious girl with a digital device who was tired, hot and wanted to watch a cartoon when we were all having a cup of tea and chatting and did not want to go indoors.  Not strong enough for the 18 month old of substantial proportions to practice his standing up skills though.

On reflection how I may improve it next year I did think I would keep an eye out for those kids duvets in the charity shops with the garish characters and it may be something they relate to. I think the kids would like that and it would thicken the sides up a bit. I would also fasten the triangle seams to the poles on the insides it was a pain re lining it up each time it got a bit out of line.

They are all gone to the west Country to annoy their other grand parents now. Poles returned to garden stash, string rewound in the shed, wigwam rolled up and stashed. Hobby horses stacked in corner.  Left the bunting up tied to the bushes and fences for a while.  Bit like after Christmas when you take down the tree.

Come back next summer!  But please get out of nappies - my bin has a stench all of its own and it is not collected for another week!!

Do you remember milk bags?

I was putting the last of the stored kitchen items into the backs of the new kitchen cupboards when I found this un-used Jugit for use with milk bags.

It was the eco idea of 2010 to replace milk cartons. You brought 1.5 lt bags and put in the jug where a spout pierced the bag.

When it first came out the price of the milk bags undercut cartons. After a few months the price crept up and the stocks became unreliable in supermarkets.  I remember I went over to 6 pint cartons about then - saving the number of cartons I put in recycling and getting a good unit price. Only once failing to use up the milk before it went off.

It was a good idea and if the bags could be recycled too in the UK (they can be, apparently it happens in Canada) because you can freeze the bags easily. 

I did see that the milk bags and jugs in use in a Costa this week - I assume it saves lots of space in not putting hundreds of big milk cartons in their commercial city centre bins.

Now I wonder what use I can put the jug too??  If I can't think of something soon I think hoarding it for 8 years is long enough!!

What next Gobe?

Honestly how does this politician continue to survive??  Did you hear about his clean air strategy this morning?   Coming round to monitor the wood in my wood burner is good dry burnable logs? Why did he think I would stuff damp, inefficient stuff in my expensive log burner that will just damage the flue and leave a deposit that takes ages to get off the glass door and issue annoying smelly smoke over the neighbours? Does he  think I am an idiot??


He should be coming round to thank me for persuading the old bloke next door not to burn half a dozen old plastic flower tubs on his garden bonfire which would produce toxic fumes.  He was convinced the council bin men would fine him for putting non-recyclable plastic in his black bin.  Neighbour is the kind of person these hard handed politician and these strategies to beat us all over the head end up with the wrong message!

Housemaid's knee

My damaged knee has gone down but is sore to kneel on.  Amazing what you need a right knee for. 

The weather is up and down. Monday it rained all day till just as the sun set. So I painted the kitchen wall to cover the new plaster.  All the low parts done by leaning sideways rather than kneeling. We were contemplating a colour emulsion but now like the brightness so much we may stay white. Least it will be cheap to re paint.  Still waiting for the sink unit to go in.

Tuesday it was sunny and reasonably warm so we tackled the grass. Nice to be out side.  Any work with shears is definitely off the agenda for a while.  Husband was on his ride on mower and I used his new lawn mower.  Its got an automatic starter and a big box and is very easy to use. Did not quite get in all done 75%.

Wednesday it rained until 2.33 pm exactly and then the sun shone brilliantly.  I had to collect the prescriptions from the health centre round the corner and decided to walk down taking a plastic bag and some work gloves with me. So fed up with litter in the village I have decided each walk I will try to collect a bit. I did a village clean up a couple of weeks ago with similar minded villagers.  My bag was half full when I came to the layby. Window frames, soil pipes and down pipes.

Our council now charges for DIY waste at Recycling centres and insists that fly tipping will not increase.  How stupid is that? This lot would have cost someone at least £12 at the recycling centre. I passed this layby yesterday just after noon so it had not been there long. Reported it by 3.30 and on village Facebook page to so if anyone saw the guilty person.  So annoying.

Being brave at the charity shop

I love these shoes. They cost me £3.75 at a hospice charity shop 4 years ago.

Who wouldn't? Pink, rose buds, peep toes, bows.......

I wore them twice that first summer. I brought a matching cardigan with roses in chiffon down the front. I loved these shoes.

BUT I have not worn them since. I was very brave and took them to the Cancer charity shop for them to sell.

OK. they were one size too small and no stretching made them bigger. They hurt like hell.

But I loved those shoes.  I will try not to go back and re-buy them.

Receipt or not to receipt?

Local radio news item this morning about East Midlands Co op are only going to print out receipts for purchases under £10 on request. Apparently 90% of people don't want them and the staff put them in the bin immediately.

First off I agreed - save ink and paper costs for the Co op and that improves its re investment etc. Saves bits of paper going straight in bin or floating around the car parks outside.

Then the discussion deepens.  Lots of people are like me!

I track spending so find receipts very helpful to see what I was spending money on. Even a few days later I revisit to see how much I spent on an item to judge whether it was good value for money.

You need to check the amount taken off you is correct - the computer is not always right. People rang in to comment with various tales of yellow sticker discounts not being correctly rung up.  Story on Sainsbury's a few days ago where a pizza was charged at £225 instead of £2.25 at a checkout and the cashier only looking at it when the customer's wife insisted on the receipt and checking. Silly cashier. The delay, and attitude. allowed the customer time to take a photo and upload to Twitter etc!!


I was about to applaud the waste/recycling  attitude of Co op till I remembered last time I was in there the amount of disposable plastic "stuff" - straws, plates, cutlery, silly toys, etc.  I must remember to write to them to complain!

Spring is coming along

Our seedlings are starting to make a bit of progress.

Second leaves on the tomatoes.  The hot mat under the seeds in the conservatory has been turned off now as the overall temperatures rise.

In the workshop the new kitchen cabinets are getting to the painting stage.

Bit more of the kitchen has gone and a new unit temporarily arrived.

We need to recycle more of the old cabinets as the recycling centre now wants £3 for every cabinet we turn up with. Not keen on bonfiring melamine wood stuff the old kitchen was made of - would it release toxins.

We are wandering about each day looking for signs of spring here. The snowdrops are coming to an end and the daffs are starting to show a tiny bit of colour. I found one tiny violet flower hidden in a sheltered bed today.  

Three in, Three out

We have been invited to a Country House weekend next month by friends celebrating a 70th birthday. Very posh.  So I went to the most upmarket charity shop in town last week to see if I could find something  to wear.  I purchased  3 new jumpers - two are lambs wool so need hand washing.

So 3 worn out jumpers had to go.  I am very strict as I am trying to reduce storage areas - what is the point of filling up valuable space with clothes you don't wear (out of date, no occasion to use, wrong size, worn out)?

So 3 worn out jumpers joined the worn out fleeces in being prepared to be made into a rag rug! 

Now the evenings are dark it is a comfortable activity stitching the plaited "worms" together sitting in front of the log fire.  I need about 20 of these - they are about 6 ft long! There is nothing much on TV needing full attention so I will be pleasantly occupied till Christmas.