Upcycling and seeing the potential

‘What bit of old tat is this now?’ I can hear you thinking it. Well – for those that don’t live in coastal seagull infested areas these are bags our local council issue to those people without a wheelie bin so they can put their bin bags in it on rubbish day. This means the bin men can come and pick them up and the contents won’t have be strewn all over the damn street in the early morning because one of the monster seagulls (they are easily the size of cats round here) has ripped it open and covered the entire street in refuse!

We don’t have one of these bags as we have a wheelie bin but on my way home from work I spied one flattened forlorn by the side of the road. It’s been very windy in the last few days so I’m guessing it had been blown there once emptied of it’s refuse. Now with no way of knowing whose it was, and secure in the knowledge the council will replace it for the household concerned I decided to tidy it up. You know what I was thinking – I was thinking it will make a spiffing potato growing bag. Eh? Eh? Inspired!! All together now – ‘nuppence – it’s our favourite price!’  :-)

Upon getting it home I discovered it in fact has a house number on it but frankly I’m not carting it a mile and a half back and I couldn’t be sure what street that number was from anyway. So I remain guilt free.
This is a good size to fit on our small patio at the back of the house, without quite taking up the whole thing. It’s nice and deep to give a decent size crop too. Happy days!  Plus it gives me an excuse to do some more seed buying....

Quick bit of crafting

I know I haven't been in evidence for far too long (over a month - I think this must be my longest gap yet) and I'm somewhat annoyed with myself for that.  All I can say in defence is that work has been hideous, chaotic, overly-busy and massively under planned for by the powers that be.  Grrrr....   Now - I will get round to posting the Scilly Isles trip up - some good pics (I think) but for now here's a quick little purse revamp I did the other morning when I woke up at silly o'clock and couldn't get back to sleep.

Do you remember my pretty purse I made using Ma's sewing machine - I was ridiculously pleased with myself over it. 

Well, a year has passed and it was looking rather more sorry for itself.  The satin fabric starting giving out along the bottom edge then just frayed hideously, the zig zags came loose and finally I recently decided something needed to be done. 
In the back of the second pic here you can see the old top I had decided to upcycle to be the new purse.  Sadly the zip had gone on this but I think the fabric's far too pretty to just dump it so wanted to find something to use it for.

Well, a little bit of cutting round the purse, sewing along the bottom edge and sides of the resulting rectangle then stitching the envelope thus created onto the top edge of the existing cotton 'under-purse' as neatly as poss and ta-daa!!  Cost even less than the last one as no power other than my own was used in it's making and it reused the existing zip and cotton backing.  (Incidentally - you're quite right and I'm sure that 'under-purse' isn't widely recognised as a descriptive term but hey - you instantly knew what I meant right?)

Not too bad for a 5am job eh?  :-)

Upcycling

Spotted these in a local shop a couple of weekends ago.  Love them but £49??!!!  Repurposed items can look great but I kind of think that as recycling is a frugal thing so the price should perhaps reflect that too.  Now I just need a strong workbench with vice and I too can bend spanners with my bare hands...

Allotment update

Well, where to start?  It seems rather a long time since I got a proper regular 'this is me wittering on about what I've been up to' post up on here.  Perhaps a little allotment update as it seems to change daily at this time of year.  Every time I look around the seeds in the front window have grown another inch I'm sure!  Triffids on a bid for world domination!  (Yes, yes - I know that was an excess of exclamation marks then.)

My allotment is long and thin and one short edge abuts the track round the site.  Theres a small slope here from the track to the plot which was just dead space with grass on it which I wanted to utilise better with some 'raised' (built into the bank) 3 sided beds.  These could then be planted up with bee friendly plants - good for the bees and hopefully good for my plot by attracting more pollinators to it.  Well - mention it and it shall be done.  Chap was there with wood assorted and power tools and in a couple of hours I was the proud owner of 2 smart, free, upcycled beds.  All the wood came from other jobs - old fences, roofs etc.  The preservative I've used on the insides was a branded end of line one in £land that I've had sitting around at home for a good 8 years!  From this:

 Grassy bank and scraggy old bits of wood. 

To this:

Pretty smart eh?  (Ignore the rasps there - they need tidying up I know!)   Both are now nearly full of earth - as I've been prepping, raking over & planting each bed I've been shoveling the rock hard lumps that refuse to break up [see pic above left to see what I mean] into these.  I'll cover with some compost and plant up very soon.  I have various wild flower bee happy seedlings at home to go in and more seeds to sprinkle over.

Speaking of seeds here's some random exciting heirloom bean varieties a friend sent me.  I have planted a few of all of them and passed some on where there were spares.  I also got the Pea Bean recently after reading about it on littleblackfox's blog.  It's also a heirloom variety - I found them at Nicky's Nursery - incidentally very reasonable on price and very helpful on the phone when you realise you forgot something on your order the day before so call up to see if you can add it in!  Lovely people. 

I hope they all do ok - the Pea Bean is the only one not to have sprouted yet!  They're in loo roll inners at home along with 3 different runner beans, celeriac, 2 types of beetroot, the bee plants, asparagus peas, soya beans [they haven't come up yet either thinking about it], herbs, the Chap's chillis, pumpkin, 3 different squashes, courgettes, chard &c, &c, &c... 

Since these photos of the plot, where you can see my [somewhat straggly] broad beans; we've also planted the spuds, onion and garlic sets, peas x 2 varieties, parsnip x 2 varieties, salsify - not expecting much there as the seeds were somewhat out of date - I've put the lot in to see if anything happens, Hamburg Parsley and 3 different types of salad leaves as catch crops between these.  Also 2 different radish types in the centre of the runner poles which are in but so far only colonised by a few sweet peas - worth having a few in amongst the runners to attract the pollinating insects to the area.  More pollinators = more food for you.  Companion planting a go-go!  Plus I like sweet peas.  Anyway, this is the product of a couple of weekends.  Now the rest to do - toms, carrots, kale, perpetual spinach beet, the oriental radish the Chap bought, swede, land cress, saltwort, cabbage, cauli, sprouts, er - I'm sure there's lots more but I'll have to check the seed box[es.]  I defy anyone to have as many packs of seeds as me and remember them all!!  :-D  What have you planted?

Irish food fail

Well, I got in last night full of ideas for soup but thinking that first I and the Chap would get some seeds sorted. We've been meaning to do this for a week now! So now was the time. Cleared stuff off kitchen table - check. Cleared stuff in lounge window bay - cd rack, 2 small tables, footstool - check. Extricated table from kitchen, round corner, down hall and into bay in lounge where it'll get the best light - check. Plastic sheeting on floor - check. Compost carried in - check. Varied plastic trays and receptacles - check. Big box of toilet roll inners - check. [For growing beans in for the uninitiated - they give a deeper root run and as the beans dislike disturbance to their roots you can plant the entire things out when the time comes.] Chap filled a module tray for his chillies &c; I filled up toilet roll inners for various Broad Beans [including some exciting crimson flowered heritage ones] and some sweet peas [Arthur Hellyer in case you're wondering]. Having omitted to keep back an empty 1 pint plastic milk carton to use for a handy compost scoop/funnel (cut off the base and leave lid on to use as a scoop. Remove lid to use as a funnel) I ended up using the jam funnel. TBH given my various poor efforts at preserve making so far this may be the best use for it! It worked very well so if you want something prettier to fill up your toilet roll liners with than an empty milk carton [though if you're using toilet roll liners in the first place it suggests to me you're not too worried about prettiness where this stage of veg growing is concerned] I'd recommend one. Expect to pay around the £3-4 mark, mine was from The Range for filling flasks with soup since we moved to our new and microwave-less building. Long story!

Anyway, a while later we had a neatly filled module tray, 4 sets of broad bean filled loo roll inners, one set of sweet pea filled ones and I'd laid out all the potatoes to chit and labelled their cardboard egg trays and *fridge egg trays as well.

Thoughts turned to dinner. And eyes turned to the time... :-O

Needless to say at 10 to 10 in the evening I'm afraid I no longer had the will to start making bread; not even soda bread, nor soup from scratch. We had veg and hash browns (cacky emergency freezer food I'm know - though the veg were fresh) with some grated cheese over the top of the veg. So - er - potato cakes are kinda Irish right? [Although I don't think LIDL is...]

I did chop the veg for a soup in the slow cooker overnight so I wasn't completely slack, and it meant I could have fresh home made potato, leek and Dorset Blue Vinney soup today for lunch at my aforementioned work sans microwave. Yum. Anyway, I'm pleased with the seed sowing, we, and especially the Chap, were getting a little twitchy feeling we were behind. Chap has the bad fortune to be working the weekend so I'm planning on getting a lot more seeds and planning done [and rugby watching - final weekend of the 6 nations people!]. Enjoy the weekend and any sun it brings your way! :-)

*You may remember (or not) me wittering on about these previously. I am currently coercing work colleagues into giving them up to me. Mwah ha ha haaa.

Quick quick post

Another 'one good and one bad thing' post.

Love this ingenious use of a recycled tin and a party popper casing for bird feeders here - seen at the local St Bridget Nursery. These have holes punched in the base and a seed & fat mixture inside. And yes; if you're wondering we were there buying seeds! I just can't stop myself... We got these nifty little free guides as well. Also - by searching the ranges available we got the radish seeds for £2.29 for 60 from the Suttons range as opposed to the first pack we picked up - £3.99 for 30 seeds from Unwins! Half the seeds for nearly double the price, go figure. (As an aside to this I find Mr Fothergills good value for money and they don't charge P&P for seed only orders as opposed to T&M who do and take longer to dispatch.)

Gutted and really rather annoyed at myself - managed to break my trusty fork at the weekend trying to extract a big tuffet of grass from a path on the allotment. I can't believe my honourable friend is busted. :-( Think I'll have to borrow the chaps until I decide on a replacement - his already has a broken tine though!

Well, off to Dorset for the weekend for Ma's birthday, fingers crossed for the sun!

The art of living frugally #2

Tips for other areas of life; places a few pences can be saved.

Repurpose and reuse - upcycle. Charity clothing bags. Maybe it's just the area I live in but it's a rare week indeed that at least 1 of these doesn't come through the door. Being an inordinate hoarder; and having seen some of the scams operated this way [although to be fair probably less likely around here] I rarely have clothes to go in these and if I am having a clear out I'll take it to the local shop myself. [I tend to favour the PDSA.] Experience has told me that though there's a cheery 'if you've nothing to donate at this time leave the bag outside so we can collect it for reuse' message printed on them they rarely if ever get taken back and you end up with a pile by the front door getting dirty and blown around the street. I use these as bin bags now. Don't get me wrong - I'd rather they went back to the charity but if they're not picked up back they come into the house to be repurposed; and save me money on buying black bin bags. At last count I had 30 of these so I think I'll be alright for a while should the supply suddenly dry up.

Plastic reuses. There's so many ways to reuse plastic packaging for different things; especially if you grow any plants. From reusing water cooler cups for seedlings to grape boxes as mini propogators the only limit's your imagination. Find rather more ideas here. My latest flash of 'inspiration' [if I can be so presumptuous to call it that] is to use the shaped plastic from muffin packaging as 'cloche' style tops for plastic cup seedling pots. Neat huh?

VAT rate awareness - loopholes therein. My friend put me on to this one. Things like cotton wool, moisturiser &c - get them from baby ranges! It's VAT free so generally a good saving. I bought Boots own baby moisturiser - 300ml for £1.39 when I got it [It's now £1.42] as opposed to their own brand basic 'adult' moisturiser - 150ml for £1.49 at the time [now £1.52.] 10p more for half the mount of product - go figure!! My friend also gets baby range oatcakes as they're way cheaper than getting them from the regular cracker aisle in the stupormarket she says.

Local offers - our council does a compost giveaway every year. The compost is made from the green rubbish they collect throughout the year then in the spring they'll park up in a local car park and you can fill 4 bags for free. There's also the local campaign against wasted food and other rubbish - don't let Devon go to waste / Love Food Hate Waste. They'll send a free bag, pen, spaghetti measurer, magnetic memo board [really handy for the shopping list], book of tips for leftover food etc etc to local residents for free.

Freebies online - I've mentioned this before but it can be worth it. These 2 bags were both freebies I signed up for or heard about online. The jute one was in return for sending in plastic bags for recycling so we can't complain about that!

Swaps - we were lucky enough to have a local seed swap set up in Exeter - there's a few of these around the country. Or how about just setting one up at work or for other items? I actually managed to give up a load of my 'spare' [as much as seeds can ever be 'spare' - yep seedaholics anonymous here I come] seeds last time and came back with a mere 2 packets of interesting things to try.

Freecycle - get joined up to your local freecycle group. Here people post items that they no longer need but that are perfectly good and you can email them to request them. Posting 'wants' is also allowed and you have the satisfaction that you've saved not only some pence but also the item from going in landfill. Yay all round!

How to make a gift bag

Quick post as we've been discussing the options of preserves / handmade etc for xmas pressies and there was a query re packaging. We used to make bags from colourful magazine pages when I was young, you could use xmas wrap or perhaps brown paper and stamp it with something festive. Even wallpaper etc – anything. These make bags with a base so ideal for jars:
One sheet appropriately sized paper. Fold round to make 'bag' shape. I've folded the top edge over to neaten, also strengthens if you want to add handles at the end.

Glue edges. Fold section up from base – bear in mind that the final whole width of the flat base to your bag will be half the amount you fold up now. Fold back over the other way as well.

Open out and fold 'flaps' thus formed into centre and stick down.

Fold flaps in half again and stick down again – tada!

If you wanted you can pop a strip of tape on the bottom for extra safety. Then punch holes in top – add ribbon handles / tags &c &c.

Rain: 2 Umbrellas: 0

Yes, it has been raining most days recently but it hasn't been particularly windy. No - these gallant umbrellas were let down by shoddy mechanisms; unfortunately at the same time dooming me to wrestling with an unopened umbrella in the middle of a cloudburst. "Help me I'm melting..." etc.

Anyway, I started wondering if anything useful could be made from the remains rather than pitching the whole lot into landfill. I thought a shopping bag would be a good idea. The fabric from a brolly would fold up nice and small to enable it to be carried around in a pocket or bag whilst still being strong and durable for heavy loads. The fact that it's waterproof would be an added benefit over the cotton type bags I already have. These brollies could have their day once more!

I've started taking the fabric off the ribs and will update how the bag making goes but having just had a little google about I've seen that I'm not the first to come up with this idea. So there you go - upcycle those brollies and equip yourself with a free waterproof shopper at the same time. Win - win I reckon. :-)

'A purse, A purse. My kingdom for a purse...'

...or something along those lines.

Being unfortunate enough to lose mine recently (grrr) I had been attempting for the last couple of weeks to stuff my cash into a metal card holder, along with the cards. This really doesn't work. As I was getting somewhat irate with that arrangement I decided to make use of mother's sewing machine whilst I was home for the weekend and knock up a small purse; of the size to take a card and some cash and fit into a petite handbag without taking up all the room like those bigger purses with their historically significant collection of shop receipts, and points cards for all and sundry even the places you never shop, do.

I had an offcut of a gunmetal satin - lovely colour but an absolute git to sew apparently as it's slidey and you have to fiddle with the tension on the machine etc etc. so - bit of cotton to back it, an old zip and some zig zag stitching later and ta-daa!! I'm pathetically pleased with this, due in part I think because of the relief at not having to struggle to fit a £2 coin where one really didn't want to go but also because it's an age sinc I knocked anything like this up and even if the curves aren't equal - I think it looks ok. I didn't measure anything, except by eye and could have finished a lot faster had I not done the decoration. As it was I think most time was spent changing cottons and tying off the ends. Due to the aforementioned dire warnings about the slippery material I first stiched all the way round the outside of the rectangle to sew the satin and the cotton together, then did the zig-zagging, finally attaching the zip and sewing up the sides. It does the job and cost only the power the machine used, all other bits recycled from the cupboard. Good enough for me. :-D

Making felt

Just a very quick little 'teaser' update - I'm going to try my hand at making felt. I'm doing it a cheaty way I think but someone at work mentioned it to me and I'm intrigued. Get an old 100% wool jumper that's handwash only and stick in your washing machine at 60 degrees with a regular load and it turns into felt! Apparently there's a reason for this* but it sounds great. I want another of these flowers for a plain dress I have so think this could be the answer. This one I didn't make - it came from Cadiz!

*Found here: "Very simply, felt is matted wool. Wool becomes felt when it is subjected to moisture, heat, and pressure. (In fact, if domestic sheep were not shorn, over time their wool would felt or "cot".) Hot soapy water makes the wool slippery, and causes tiny scales on the fiber to "open up". The scales prevent the fibers from backing up again after they slide across each other; with agitation, the fibers get hopelessly tangled together. When cooled and dried, the scales close and lock the wool into the tough, durable material we call felt."

The 3 R's, or - Take a bit of damn responsibility

Not the 'painfully coerced into fitting a twee phrase' 3 R's of Education (Dur - 2 of them don't even start with R - and you're using them as related to Education - frak me you really tried for the irony there huh?) but the rather greener Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

It was only when I read recently that you should also try and do them in this order that this became blindingly obvious to me as well. It is obvious - I just hadn't ever formed words round that nebulous 'but everyone knows that' concept that we all like to spout sometimes and probably have 'The Man In The Pub' to thank for. (Let's be honest here - quite often the cry of *'B.E.K.T.' is more out of affronted embarassment and annoyance at oneself for not ever having put such a blindingly simple concept into a succinct pet phrase that all can easily grasp and moreover, that you can trademark and make a bundle from every time a newspaper uses it, than actually because you had ever devoted any time to thinking deeply about it before. :-) But I digress...)

Reduce - does what it says on the tin. Easy example - take your own shopping bag with you = therefore using less plassy bags = less resources used to make said plassy bags plus less of them being disposed of after they have fulfilled their purpose. (Love these people's concept of guerilla bagging.)

At this point I will say that I have zero intention of explaining why these should be good things for us to do. If you have made it thus far in life and have no idea what I'm talking about you are either a) approx 3 years old in which case I'm sure Dora the nauseating poppet or someone similar can explain it to you or b) you have been living under a rock for the last few decades in which case much the same answer as a) applies I would imagine.

Reuse - what we are stuck with and can not get rid of under the Reduce principle we should at least try and reuse as much as possible, so the best possible 'value' is got from the energy and raw materials that went into making it.

Recycle - can be pretty energy intensive hence why it should be the last option of the 3 green R's.

It's Reuse I wished to comment (/rant - you know me) on today and some spiffy ideas a bunch of us over on the Cottage Smallholder site came up with for garden related stuff. If you're not too bothered about the looks of your items all the time, particularly for those temporary solutions, there is a wealth of stuff out there that can be utilised in the growing process. Plastic food containers of all kinds can be pressed into service as seedling trays or pots (plastic/polystyrene cups), then 'growing on' pots of differing sizes. This is a great re-use as otherwise these containers would be going straight into the recycling (hopefully) bin but are durable things with much life left yet.

I got to thinking - what about a reuse for those odd things that no-one uses but you all seem to be stuck with? Specifically the plastic egg trays that come in new fridge doors have always vexed me with their pathetically hopeful pastel tinted plastic non-usefulness. Chirpily they sit there taunting you with a non-existent 50's 'futuristic' world where all would be rounded, pastel, and yes - plastic. [Is this only me or is anyone else thinking - 'YES - I too know that vexedness?'] Then it hit me - we all save our old egg boxes to chit potatoes in right? (Ok - that's for a given value of 'all'.) Why not round up your friends and relieve them of their plastic egg trays (unless they're actually using them - I've yet to see any doing the task for which they were spawned) then you have easy clean durable trays for the spuds - chitting thereof, and can pass any cardboard egg boxes onto your chicken owning friends - hopefully in return for an egg or 2. Ta Daa!! (I'm quite pathetically pleased with this flash of inspiration.) I think it may even count as Upcycling; like recycling, but reusing/retasking items to give a finished product of greater use/value than the original constituent parts. I have grand plans for a shed along these lines but they have yet to come to fruition...

For more (and far better as lots are from other people) ideas along the same lines you can download our tips as a pdf or a word doc from the original post here, courtesy of the lovely **CSH people. (Designed to be printed out double sided.)

Anyway - apologies for the many asides in this post but hoping it may sprinkle a little inspiration and please share your top pet ideas.

*B.E.K.T.: But Everyone Knows That

**CSH: Cottage Smallholder