Tag Archives: craft

S is for Stashbusting

Day 19 of the A – Z Blog Challenge

Originally, when i planned out the ideas for each day of this challenge, i was going to do S is for Seamstress. As the month has continued though, i have figured that you are all well aware that i am seamstress and i recommend you gain this skill yourselves in order to help save both money and waste. Therefore, an alternative S is now required.

First, i have a confession to make:

My name is Anita and i am a hoarder.

I’d like to think not in the way of the TV shows that show houses packed to the rafters of boxes and boxes of tat, but where crafting is concerned, i can never throw anything i may consider useful away.

‘That is fine,’ i hear you say, ‘you will be able to use it up in an awesome project.’

‘That is true,’ i hastily reply, ‘but that isn’t how it works…’

You see, i always have a little bit of trouble deciding what to use the stuff for, particularly if it is a new length of fabric that i have bought new. Usually because i fell in love with the design rather than with a specific project in mind.

I then start to fall into the weird category that only true sewists understand, where you sit and look at the fabric. I stroke my hand across it, feel its texture and imagine all the possibilities that could come from this one piece of material – you’ll see me do this to clothing in shops as well, but more to determine the quality of the fabric and the stitching to see whether it is worth paying the price for it – this is also a useful skill to have by the way.

And if i do make the decision to make something, then i usually have a crisis of confidence in my own sewing skills, which is plainly ridiculous, i have been sewing for over 30 years. But that little devil that sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear says,

‘What if you muck it up? All that lovely expensive fabric will be wasted.’

All of this means that i have quite a fabric stash going on here and it needs to be used.

My mission for this year is to reduce it, bit by bit, little by little. It isn’t doing me any favours stacked in the spare room looking pretty.

fabric stash

Just a small section, and i may have fibbed about it being stacked prettily…

And if you are also guilty of creating a stash connected with your hobbies? Do the same. Use it. Enjoy using it. And believe in yourself and your abilities.

Have a happy day.

Anita x

C is for Crafts

Day Three of the A -Z Blogging Challenge

Well, that’s a shocker isn’t it! I guess me being me, i couldn’t do anything different than crafts for the letter C. But how do they tie in with the theme of Make Do and Mend, Reuse, Recycle and Spend Less? I mean, have you seen the cost of craft supplies???

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I have lots of crafty skills and hobbies, my main one being that of hiding behind a sewing machine and losing myself in the flow of the fabric as it glides under the needle. When i wake from my reverie i am usually quite chuffed to discover i have a complete new garment in my hand. Can i call that C for Couture? I am also known for playing around with Crochet hooks, Cooking, Cameras, Clay (well Fimo but that doesn’t start with C) and Jewellery Making (sorry, couldn’t think of a related C word for that so gave up) and i feel that every single one of these has helped me to save a lot of money over the years. Quite a few of these i will be talking about in later posts during this month so for today i am going with the Craft of Crochet. The picture is my current work in progress, an ordinary granny square blanket made from all the odds and ends and scraps/almost finished balls of wool i have lying around here. My youngest son has already bagsied it for his bed when it’s finished.

Scrap blanket

Many, many years ago a close friend was pregnant with her first child and i wanted to make something special for her. I decided it would be nice for her to have a white baby shawl but i had no idea how to make one. My mum had tried teaching me to knit but although i grasped the underlying principles, with her being left handed and me being right handed it wasn’t much of a success. I can sort of knit now, but i much prefer one needle to two, it works up quicker to get the finished result – just call me impatient, on this subject it would be true.

I took a trip into the local library and borrowed a book to teach me how to crochet. Yes, this was in the 1980’s, before the internet properly existed and most definitely before the explosion in Youtube tutorials. In this way i managed to create an OK granny square shawl, it wasn’t perfect and it wouldn’t lie flat, but i was delighted with it, and my friend said she was too. I tried several granny square blankets after that but found that i had to keep to small squares and stitch them together if i wanted them to lie flat. Eventually i put away my trusty hook and stopped doing them because i just didn’t know what i was doing wrong and knew nobody who could tell me. Unfortunately, as this was the 80’s and digital cameras were also not around, there are no photo’s of my works of art.

Fast forward to about two years ago when i was having a random conversation with another friend while i was at work when she said that i needed to chain the corners.

‘Chain the corners?’ I said, ‘is that all i’m doing wrong? I need to just chain three around each corner?’

I went home, dug a crochet hook out from my discarded (and well buried in the cupboard of ‘he who goes in might not come out alive’ ) wool bag along with an ancient ball of wool and gave it a go.

Would you believe it?

Tadah!!

A fully flat square that just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I then went onto Youtube (i can highly recommend the Bella-Coco tutorials) and taught myself more, and then i subscribed to a crochet teaching magazine and i was off.

‘But Make do and Mend!’ I hear you shout.

‘Wool is not cheap!’ I hear you cry.

‘How is this Reuse and Recycle?’ I hear your tirade as you beat the air with your tightly clenched fists.

(Ok, i might have got a bit carried away there).

But yes, crochet is brilliant for reusable items; for making do with what you have or, as with yesterday’s beeswax wraps, for making from scratch in order to save money in the long run.

In my kitchen i have crocheted cotton dishcloths which are so much better to use than the J cloths that used to go in the bin, my cloths go in the boil wash with the tea towels.

Dishcloth

In my bathroom i have cotton crocheted flannels and bath pouf’s (the second photo was all Christmas presents for the females in my family – needless to say, their bathrooms are also full of my hand crocheted goodies).

And on my dressing table, for make up removal and facial cleansing i have cotton crochet scrubbie pads that leave my face feeling so much cleaner and fresher than cotton wool pads ever did. They go in the wash to be used again and again and again.

Yes, the wool isn’t cheap, but it’s a darn sight cheaper in the long run than buying all those disposable products. And better for the environment. Believe me, until you have cleansed with a crocheted scrubbie, you really don’t know how clean your face can feel – yep, even better than with the cream with annihilated apricot stones in!

I am generally quite popular when friends and family have babies……

So, crochet can be time consuming and i think we can agree that wool isn’t cheap, but in the long run, i find it a satisfying hobby that i can sit and do while i watch telly in the evenings. I have awesome, unique accessories and blankets throughout my house – i even have a pair of crocheted baby converse booties dangling from my mirror in my car.

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The ultimate point about it though, is that i get to pretend i’m a wizardess, wave a pointy magic stick around and make amazing things happen with it…

Have a happy day.

Anita x

Oh, and most of my crafty goodness can be found on Facebook at Baby Dreams Stitchery

 

B is for Beeswax Wraps

The A to Z Blogging Challenge

A recent discovery in my bid for a more sustainable lifestyle are Beeswax wraps. I am so totally in love with these!

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I take a packed lunch with me every day to work. Quite often this consists of home made soup which i make in batches and freeze in reusable plastic containers that i can then put straight into the microwave. However, when i have had a lazy weekend which involved me not getting around to making said soup i revert to the good old favourite of a sandwich which would then be put into a plastic sandwich bag. This piece of plastic would then go in the bin once i had eaten my lunch. In my hunt for a more planet and purse friendly option i came across these. If looked after properly, they can be reused again and again, they are chemical free and the perfect alternative to cling film, sandwich bags and foil.

What makes them so amazing? They use the heat of your hands to fold around anything, i have recently seen them referred to as ‘self cling fabric’ as well.

And the cleaning? You just wash them in hot soapy water with your normal dishes – not the dishwasher though, that is too hot, and will make the beeswax melt. Similarly, these cannot be used in the microwave (i just bung a plate on top of any bowls etc). It is also recommended that you don’t use them for raw meat because of the risk of contamination through not being able to clean them at an incredibly hot temperature.

On my search for these i also looked out how to make them and where to source the ingredients, mainly because i have a fabric stash a mile high that needs to be used up. The ones in the photos are wraps i made myself and when my next delivery of beeswax arrives i will be having some up for sale on my ETSY page and my Facebook page, both of which are called Baby Dreams Stitchery. So keep an eye out here over the next week for some fab designs – don’t you think the Minnie Mouse one is adorable? That particular one is currently sitting in my fridge covering half a tin of mushy peas…but i have a fair bit of that fabric left to make more. I also have some pretty funky vintage Paddington Bear earmarked for this project as well, although i don’t have much of this fabric left so there won’t be very many made.

So, as far as i am concerned, beeswax wraps are the bees knees. They have resulted in a considerable drop in the amount of single use plastic i use in the house (that tin of mushy peas would previously have had a sandwich bag pulled over the top) and my family are gradually nicking the ones i have made faster than i can make them – the ones for Baby Dreams Stitchery will be hidden from their prying eyes and thieving fingers…

For those of you who are vegetarian, it is also possible to get soya wraps which are purported to work in a similar way, but i cannot comment on these as i have not researched them…yet…

Check back tomorrow to discover what my C is going to be in this alphabet challenge and seriously take a look at making the switch to beeswax or soya wraps, i mean, how much clingfilm and how many sandwich bags do you get through in a year????? I bet you’d be horrified if you stopped to work it out.

A quick google search has told me that in 2017 there were 260 official working days in the year… i’ll let you carry on with the math from there as only you know how much single use plastic you use in each lunchbox for your family…

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Feel free to let me know your answer…

And above all,

Have a happy day.

Anita. x

A is for Action

The A to Z Blogging Challenge

Now, since i decided to do this challenge i had chosen to do A is for Anita: a bit about me and why i feel that the time is now to reduce the waste of both resources and money that we, as a society, put out there. But on sitting down to my computer this morning i changed my mind (that’s my prerogative, i’m a girl after all and don’t mind a little bit of stereotyping when it suits me) because it’s not just me that needs to change, we all need to take action. And if it actually helps us in the long run? I would call it a win win. Besides, you will probably learn quite a bit about me in the forthcoming posts throughout this month.

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  I mean, really? Why would anyone do this?

Far too many years ago, when i was but a lass in secondary school, i took a book out of the school library. What is so amazing about that i hear you ask? That is what libraries are for and as a self-confirmed bibliophile it was certainly not an extraordinary experience. What is so amazing is that i can still remember the message this book brought (even though i haven’t a clue now of the title or author, come on, it was over 30 years ago!).

The story was about a couple of time travelling teenagers. They had come back to the 1980’s from the future to try and change the past because the world they lived in was barren and struggling to cope with the residue of the lifestyle in which we lived. The teenagers sought to change opinion of the people they met by their harrowing descriptions of what would happen if their lives of waste continued. But ultimately they failed in their mission. The reason for this? They hadn’t gone back far enough, they had only travelled to the time of the wastage, not the point where they could change it.

I’m not saying it changed me from that moment, there are plenty of people around on this planet that would certainly take great delight in calling me a liar if i did. But it has stayed in my mind. I have felt guilty when i knew that i was wasting stuff that could be used. There are also a great number of people on this planet who know that i am a crafty hoarder of craft related items, with a view to the fact that ‘it could come in handy one day.’ But at the beginning of this year i decided to call a halt to unnecessary spending and wastage. A buy nothing new year and a significant reduction in my use of single use plastics are the ‘Actions’ i have chosen to start with.

I’m not saying you have to do the same.

If you do agree with me and make even just a few small changes to your lifestyles because of the posts i write over the next month that would be great. Let me know how you get on.

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I took this picture in the car park of a local secondary school.

And if you know what that darned book is called or the author then i’d love for you to tell me, it’s been bugging me for weeks!

Above all,

Have a happy day.

Anita x

 

 

 

 

The A to Z Blog Challenge

Have you ever heard of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge?

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Nope?

I hadn’t either until a couple of days ago and then i thought,

‘Well, that might be fun.’

Then i found that the done thing was to not only write a blog post on each day of the month, but it should also revolve around a theme.

‘Oh,’ i thought, ‘that makes it a bit more difficult. Still might be fun though, what theme shall i do?’

And lo, i asked my trusty Facebook friends what they thought would be a good fit for me to theme up a month of blog posts in extremely short notice and the reply was:

‘Crafts.’

I should have guessed that really, most of my Facebook posts are to do with my crafty hobbies. However, while i was on  a thinking roll, i thought again (i was getting a headache by now with all this cogitating) and i figured i could maybe go one step further than that. My crafting these days has centred around a more thrifty, planet, money saving type of focus (as my previous posts have talked about) and so i have decided to construct an A-Z list around this.

Now, apparently it was to be the big theme reveal last week, which obviously i missed because i didn’t know it existed, but never one to let an opportunity slide, i’m going to do one anyway so…

Wait for it….

The Theme for the A-Z April blog challenge is:

Make Do and Mend: Reuse; Recycle and Spend Less.

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This will also incorporate a few crafts along the way, just to keep my hand in like….

There, that was worth waiting for wasn’t it!

Have a happy day.

Anita. x