Back to normal - sewing!

Normal service has been resumed - the sewing machine is back in action!  I knew something was wrong.  I packed it away and folded up the craft table before we went away, and it hasn't been out since.  However, this afternoon, I finally got around to making a new ironing board cover from a curtain remnant I picked up today, and I feel much better.  

This is the sad state my ironing board has been in for quite a few weeks.  Perhaps I am doing too much ironing ;-)  There was a real likelihood of the cover falling to pieces as I ironed so action was needed.  I simply removed the old cover, used it as a pattern to cut out a new one, used the same binding, and, as they say, Bob's your uncle (no idea who Bob is).

Here's it is with it's new cover, looking very smart and trendy.  The whole project took me about an hour, start to finish and cost me a fraction of the price of a bought one.  Why I've been putting this off, I have no idea.  Once I had the fabric there was no reason not to put the time aside to complete the task.  I think that's what I need to do with a lot of little jobs that have been stacking up over the past few weeks.  Simply get on with them.  Stop making excuses and putting things off, just pick a job and do it.  

We went for a walk into town this morning and I meant to take my camera to photograph the trees in their autumn colours.  Next time we're out, I'll try to remember.  I snapped this picture out of our window; this is a horse chestnut in glorious shades of yellow, gold and russet. Against the dark green conifers, it looks so pretty.  The leaves won't be on the trees much longer if the blustery winds stay with us.  We noticed a lot of the storm drains are blocked with fallen leaves, and we're sure we can remember not so long ago the drains used to be cleared as part of the council's autumn maintenance programme.  I guess there isn't enough money in the council coffers for that sort of work to be done any longer.

One of the things that we have noticed during the course of the year is that the same birds frequent the gardens here.  I regularly see the jackdaw with the nylon twine wrapped around one of its claws; there's a blackbird with two distinctive grey patches on its wings, and this week we've seen this bird several times (the photo's not the best, sorry).  It is a blackbird, but has most unusual white feathers in it's wings and tail.  It's a first for me, and it will be interesting to see if the feathers eventually moult out and he ends up black all over, or not.

And finally, we have confirmed the kitchen.  Sighs of relief all round.  We saw our builder today and he thinks January is looking hopeful.  We have, however, taken a break from looking at ovens; there is just too much choice these days and we have found wading through all the new and different settings, programmes, shelf and door variations, heat directions and instruction manuals just a little wearing, so we are giving that a rest for a while.  When did it all get so complicated? 

Needs and wants in the kitchen

Lots of this today!

So I made a list today.  The idea was to drop children at the ferry, keep a couple of appointments then check on several things for up-coming projects in town before meeting the ferry and bringing everyone home again.  We managed the appointments then had a text to say the pick-up was in half an hour!  So much for planning everything on the same day - I'll just have to carry over one or two things to the next list.

We are trying hard to make progress with plans for the kitchen.  We have finally arrived at a working design that manages to optimise and maximise the small space to the best advantage.  It has been a challenge.  We originally started by wanting to change our slim-line 50cm conventional gas oven for a full-size 60cm convection (fan-assisted) electric one.  It soon became clear that in order to do that, it would make more sense to re-do the kitchen completely.  Once we had got our heads round that idea (and it did make sense), we realised we could take the opportunity to utilise the limited space we have in the kitchen better.  Then we started to look at the glossy brochures, visit showrooms and see other people's kitchens.  Out heads were turned by 'waste management cupboards', designer taps, full-height pull-out larder units (oh, I have yearned for one of those for so long!) and toasters that pop up when you open a drawer.  This evening N has been researching ovens and saw one with an 18-page instruction manual - so that's not the one for us!

There was a real danger that we were succumbing to our wants again, and forgetting about our needs.  We need a kitchen that uses the little space available in the most efficient way.  We need somewhere to prepare and cook food.  It has to accommodate the washing machine, a sink and draining board, the central heating boiler, a hob and oven (and extractor fan) and a fridge.  There is a door opening and a radiator to take into account. By the time all those essentials are in, there really isn't much room for a 'designer' kitchen.  The spaces are filled in with the biggest cupboards possible and a range of wall units.  There is no room for a larder unit (sob!), nor can we manage a tower oven, although we would have liked that too.  What we will have is more storage space, which in a small flat like ours is a priority.  We will have a far more efficient and economical oven and fridge - both our current ones are well over 20 years old.  We hope to move a couple of electrical sockets, re-site the washing machine so it fits properly under the worktop, and create a covered area for the recycling bins.  And we will achieve all this within our original budget.  We spent quite a bit of time seriously considering a very swish kitchen that would have cost twice as much without giving us anything extra, but thankfully, as is usually the case, we saw reason and made the right decision for us.  Phew!!  Just the oven and hob to choose and then we're there.  It's taken us three or four months of discussion and looking, but we're happy with what we've decided. 

Isn't this Bird of Paradise flower beautiful?  Just one of the exotic plants we saw while we were away recently.

I need to get my head around Christmas soon.  Cards and gifts need to be thought about and I'd like to make as much as possible.  I also want to make some bits and pieces for the house over the next few weeks, so I need to do some serious planning to achieve all these things.  I need another list, I think!

The central heating has finally gone on

We're back home again, having all enjoyed our break away together.  I have taken an extra couple of days to deal with a few things that needed my attention but now I'm ready to get going again.

Whilst we were away, the first big storm of the autumn hit the south of England.  Locally, one neighbour now has several fence panels missing, and another lost a plum tree.  Winds of 99mph were recorded at the Needles, the most westerly point on the Island.  Since our return, it's been blustery, wet and cold - the central heating has finally gone on, just an hour in the morning and again in the evening.  Our thermostat is turned down to 13 degrees so the heating doesn't come on until the temperature in the flat drops below that.  We know of many people who have their thermostat much higher.  I'm sure if they just turned it down a couple of degrees there wouldn't be a noticeable difference in anything except their energy bill.  I shall continue to monitor our energy usage, which is obviously going to be much higher during the winter months, but we are currently in credit with our monthly payments.  That's the way it works - in credit during the summer when usage is low and then the money is there during the winter when we need the extra gas and electricity.

I still haven't managed to actually read the water meter properly, but I had a look at the last 4 bills we've received over the past couple of years.  I worked out our average daily usage (thank goodness for calculators!) and found that our water consumption has been gradually decreasing as we have been more mindful of how we use water but, due to the increase in standing charges, we're actually paying a little more each time on our bills.  We can't control the charges and as we already use less than the average water consumers, we can accept that.

The clocks went back an hour at the end of October, and although the mornings are light quite early, dusk is making an appearance by late afternoon.  This is the sky at about 4.15pm yesterday:

The longer evenings are a good excuse to curl up on the settee, wrap up in a quilt and read a book or knit :-)

I did manage to get all the washing out on the line over the past couple of days and it was more or less dry by the time I brought it back indoors again.  Good drying days are few and far between in autumn and winter, it's just so damp and cold, but one benefit of being at home is that I should be able to take advantage of the odd bit of good weather to get some washing dried outside.  It's certainly better than having damp washing hanging around the flat.

N planted the garlic yesterday.  From 4 bulbs he got 51 cloves, plus the one Elephant Garlic clove.  Fingers crossed they all grow.  A couple of the cabbages have been badly attacked by aphids/blackfly, and N has been picking tiny caterpillars off some of the plants as well.  I think we may need to spray them.

Yesterday we spent some time looking at what needs to be done before the end of the year.  All of a sudden, Christmas is not so very far away.  We actually planned out a calendar for the next few weeks, as we were a bit concerned something might get forgotten if we didn't write it down.  By the time all the appointments/birthdays etc had been written down, we began to realise that we need to be a little more organised.  I need to get back to some serious list-making and it's a good excuse to get busy with some needles of the sewing and knitting variety!  

Taking a family break

We're taking some time out to spend with N's family.  We're off on holiday with his sister, BIL and father.  It will have been about 40 years since they were all away together so everyone has been looking forward to it for a long time.  It will be good to spend this time together.

Frothy and ready to go

Here at home the pottering continues.  I think I've cracked bread-making now; I've started to use a dried active yeast for hand-baking that needs reactivating with warm water and sugar before its added to the flour.  As it froths up there's a wonderful yeasty/bread-making aroma in the kitchen which makes me feel like a real baker!  This type of yeast seems to be better at raising the dough which is a problem I've had as the temperatures drop off.  

The garden is ticking over on its own; the brassicas are coming along nicely.  The sucflower seeds are drying out in the shed.

That mouldy seed in the front will have to go!

We'll be back in a few days' time.

Monitoring the meters

As I sit typing this evening, we're having a very sudden and noisy thunderstorm accompanied by a deluge, yet it was beautiful earlier today.  Ah, the British weather, always keeps us on our toes.

Another of the national energy companies announced it's price increase today.  Anything between 8-10% seems to be the going rate; our energy provider has put it's prices up by 8.2%.  We wish our income had risen by that amount.

Gas meter, complete with webs - the spider  runs for cover every time I lift the lid to  the meter box

Since we left work, we have certainly become more aware of our energy consumption.  Our income is reduced and we need to make our money work for us.  It makes sense to us, therefore, to look at where the money goes and what, if anything, we can do to monitor our outgoings.  Some are fixed (council tax, TV licence, car tax etc) but we do have some influence over our utilities - electricity, gas and water.  Since July I have been reading the electricity and gas meters every Monday morning; they are both easily accessible.  The water meter is another matter.  It is set into the pavement outside the property, on a busy road.  The lid has to be levered open with a screwdriver, which is fine, but the actual meter it is sunk to a depth of about three feet and the numbers are very small.  I could do with a magnifying glass!  However, I will not be beaten (or embarrassed by passing motorists - this is my water meter, after all) and where there is a will there is also a way.  I just have to find it ;-)

How am I supposed to read that?!

However, back to the electricity and gas readings.  Through the summer we used almost a steady 30 units of electricity every week.  The gas worked out at just a little bit over 1 unit each week.  We expect these figures to go up during the winter when we will need lights on more, and the gas central heating will be running.  We are able to check both utilities online, so by entering our weekly figures we can see how much we owe.  Because we pay by monthly direct debit, we get into credit during the summer months when our consumption is low, and this is gradually clawed back during the winter months when our usage is greater.  it will be very interesting to see how the readings increase during the winter and what, if anything, we can do to reduce them.  

There are a number of websites giving 'average' energy consumption figures but I haven't trawled through many although I may do so another time.  I'm confident however that we use considerably less than the 'average' figures.  We are careful and certainly don't waste energy.  We have implemented many of the actions to save energy - turning off lights, full loads of washing, energy-saving light bulbs, turning the thermostat down etc, but it's always sensible to be open to new or different ways of doing things which might help.  For example, I don't leave the laptop on charge permanantly now.  We have been fortunate that autumn has been mild so far and we won't be putting the heating on till November.  When we had the boiler serviced earlier this year, the engineer suggested a way of getting a more even temperature throughout the flat - in past years the lounge has been warm but the rest of the flat has been decidedly cooler - so we will implement his idea and see if that makes a difference. 

 

A drop of the wet stuff, and food wastage

We've been quite spoiled over the summer, weather-wise.  It's been lovely - dry, sunny and warm.  This weekend we've been back to more traditional British weather - it's rained, a lot.  There was a rumble of thunder and accompanying flash of lightning on Sunday then an absolute downpour of torrential rain.  It got so dark we had to put the lights on, in the middle of the day.  However, it seems we got away lightly because only a few miles away on the mainland, Hayling Island apparently had a tornado!

We managed to nip down to the garden to pick a few leaves from our various cabbages and we enjoyed them, lightly steamed, with our roast dinner last night.  

The quilt top is finally in one piece, all seams neatly hemmed by hand, and all the tacking is out (and yes, I do save the long tacking threads to re-use).  It was a little tricky using the machine to top-stitching the last few triangles as the bulk of the quilt was difficult to manouvere through the small 'throat' aperture of my machine.  The trick was to take it slowly, ensuring the bulk was rolled tightly to feed through the gap.  I'm pleased with how it looks.  

Just not enough room!

In the news today, Tesco, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the UK, reported that in the first 6 months of this year, it generated about 30,000 tonnes of food waste.  I guess other supermarkets generate huge amounts, too.  I was reading through some of the comments on this online report, and found myself nodding my head in agreement with many remarks made.  No 'home economics' taught in schools anymore, so youngsters aren't learning how to cook from scratch, work to a budget etc etc; supermarkets are enticing us to buy more than we need with BOGOF offers, and putting a set amount in sealed plastic bags rather than letting customers buy what they need; we shop less often than we used to - our parents and certainly grandparents shopped daily for food - it was fresh, cooked and eaten on that day; nowadays people are more inclined to throw food out rather than produce a meal from left-overs.  The list goes on.  It occurred to me that these are all issues that aiming for a simple life tries to address, and it's certainly a topic of conversation that N and I have on a regular basis.

With foodbanks becoming fixtures in many towns (and that in itself is a very sad indictment on the impact of the economy on those who struggle to makes ends meet), the amount of food that is simply wasted is shocking.  Tesco have had the decency to publish their figures (hopefully others will do their own stock-take) and will hopefully take steps to attempt to cut down the wastage that they can control, but as consumers we also have responsibilities.  We should not allow ourselves to be seduced into those all-too tempting offers, only to throw half the food away because we haven't used it in date - we know of people who clean their fridges out every week, throwing away any foodstuffs that are left, before they restock with fresh food for the coming week.  It goes to waste - it is all thrown away.  Planning meals would ensure we only buy the food we need.  Learning how to make meals from left-overs - soups made from the last few veggies, for example.  

I'm sure those people who regularly throw food away wouldn't throw actual cash - money - into the waste bin quite so recklessly.  

It's a problem, and a very serious problem, that needs to be tackled on many fronts.  Blaming the supermarkets alone is not the answer.  Yes, they most certainly have a big part to play and pressure should be brought on them to address their wastage, but all of us consumers need to think twice before we over-buy perishable food that we then can't be bothered to use up.  Adopting a thrifty, responsible attitude towards our food shopping and subsequent usage would be a good step forward.

Just my thoughts on this.   

End of week round-up

A familiar scene - sitting at the table with a cup of tea.  The sun is low in the sky at present, and it casts long shadows through our lounge windows.  Perhaps I should call this 'The Thinker'  ;-)

Gosh, I'm not sure where this week has gone to, it seems to have flown by.  Some of the things we had hoped to get sorted haven't happened, but that has given us time to mull things over a cuppa and some home-made cakes and biscuits :-)  We have spent quite a bit of time thinking carefully about how we can make the flat work best for us, and how we can achieve that.  We're still 'thinking outside the box' as far as storage is concerned, and today the penny dropped for N (as I was quietly hoping it might) that the old desk that he wants to get rid of from the bedroom could actually be utilised as shelving/storage in the hall cupboard.  I knew he'd get there without me mentioning it, we think along the same lines, usually arriving at the same conclusion, just not always via the same route!  He also came up with a great idea to replace the washing basket problem, one which I hadn't thought of at all, so I was really pleased with his lateral thinking on that.  So we're really put our 'spare' time to good use, spending it thinking rather than doing, and solutions have been found.  

N has had two visits to the dentist this week, and is now well-versed in interdental brushing techniques.  I know he didn't enjoy the treatment (who would, with no fewer than 10 injections?) but a lot of the staining on his teeth has finally been removed.  We are both being far more attentive to how we clean our teeth now; I think the realisation that a bit of time and effort does pay off in the long run has finally hit home with us.  We now have a multi-coloured selection of those little tiny brushes - just have to remember which ones I use.

This morning we took advantage of a dry spell to plant some daffodil bulbs.  We originally planted them last autumn; they flowered this spring and once they had died down, we lifted them, dried them and stored them.  I know most people leave the bulbs in permanantly, but space is tight here so up they came to make way for some bedding during the summer.  Hopefully they'll make a good show again next spring.  

All those worms being busy in the garden

We were delighted to see so many worms in the beds as we were planting - we moved several into the new beds to go to work on the manure we put down last week.

The clocks go back soon.  We have really noticed the sun is so much lower in the sky now, throwing wonderful long shadows.  From our lounge window we have seen that the sun sets over the neighbouring roofs rather than over the trees further around.  We can just about manage our evening meal in natural daylight; we need the lights on soon after 6 o'clock now.  Once the clocks go back, reverting to GMT from British Summer Time, the daylight hours will be considerably shorter and our energy usage will reflect our greater reliance on electricity and gas.  

The quilt front . . . 

. . . and detail of the quilting on the reverse.

Finally, the quilt centre is now in one piece.  Phew!!  Unfortunately I have a problem sourcing fabric for the borders; I can't get any more of the black fabric I used for the linking triangles (sold out - should have bought enough yardage to begin with) and I haven't been successful in finding an alternative, which is really annoying.  I'm trying to think of a Plan B.

I shall try to be good tomorrow and observe 'screen-free Sunday'.