Laughing at the 1960s

Gales of laughter in our house on Sunday afternoon when we caught a bit of the Living and Cooking over the decades on TV. Who could mess up a Vesta meal??  My mother, I remember the watery beef curry carried into the dinning room as a treat, it lay flat as a pancake on the plate.  My mother firmly believed my father would enjoy a reminder of his war time service in Burma/India which I never understood as I know he hated it and I once watched him cry throughout "The Purple Plain" film.

I also remember in the 1960s feeling that using cafes and eating out was not something my family (or was it social class?) did and as result it always felt very strange to me.  We were definitely a family that took own sandwiches, on the train, to the beach. I still feel eating out is slightly "foreign" and a "privilege" .

Why did we laugh so much???  The TV were using our wedding present dinner service at one point and sitting at our first kitchen table set gifted from an aunt !  We can't wait for the full 1970s experiences - cooking an evening meal in the Ted Heath era of timed electricity black outs.  My husband got a timer, and worked out a formula to allow for the 3 hour power cut during the day and for a casserole to cook in the oven in the afternoon and turn off at 6pm when the next power cut was due. We then had a hot meal by candle light when we arrived home just afterwards (if the train was running!).
And ohhh - those '60s dresses with the bright, bright colours and hemlines!!!

Textile Arts

Had an inspiring time at the London Sewing Show where I attended a couple of good workshops. Wendy Dolan showed a lovely technique for textile arts.  I am trying it out and will post the results of my experiments later on.  Her method involves stitching a basic background in white textiles of different sorts before painting with fabric paint and over stitching with freehand machine embroidery.  Not a technique for anyone with a unruly hoarding habit as it encourages keeping lots of scraps of cloth and using bits and pieces!

Have a look at her work http://www.wendydolan.co.uk/html/index6.htm

The contemporary quilting was also fantastic!


Weather has been awful today, 40 mph winds and a very sharp shower.  All the seedlings had to stay sheltered in the conservatory today.
Put off the experimental hot cross buns today - going to be plenty of indoor days this week as the forecast is awful.

Greenhouse and day out

Got the greenhouse half glazed today. After phoning the manufacturer and the garden centre expert and engineer son, luckily was at a job interview and not teaching today.  The instructions said use the wire clips but there were only 6.  OH NO, manufacturer said, we have supplied a different sort cause we think they are better, but no we have not changed the instruction book!!!!  Re did the first few panes again....... and once we got going two sides were completed in a two hours.

I am running away from home.

Off to London to the Sewing and Stitching show at Excel.

Husband is going to watch build up to F1 Grand Prix and Motorcyling Grand Prix all day.

Caught out by husband's need for hot cross buns

My husband does not like cooking programmes so I usually don't get to watch any in the evenings, except he quite likes Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood Bake Off so he agreed to the Easter baking programme this week. All through the Hot Cross Bun section - he asked have you got that ingredient? Yes, we have all that in the cupboard.  Can you do that? Yes. Hang on, no, I haven't got that cutting blade thing, always wanted one but never found one in the kitchen shops.  Oh dear, won't be able to make Hot Cross Buns like those then........ (Relief)

This morning, on my return from my annual blood test,  a parcel from Amazon with a blade.  Bother, now shall have to stop hiding from the rain and watching cooking and go and make some buns.  Can they be any worse looking than these basic ones from the supermarket?

Can I achieve anything like these?  Now that  I have all the ingredients and equipment?  will try over the weekend! I used to be able to knock out trays of Chelsea buns for the kids on a wet Sunday when they were little.



Electricity usage monitoring
By the way the SMART  meter readings are proving most interesting.  It took 4p of electricity to do a light (30 Min) wash. We have a new machine with a good rating.  Electric shower is about 6p a time.

A day of baking and cooking a hot lunch and a full evening meal, fridge/freezer fairly full, one load of coffee in percolator, one load of washing, two showers, and normal TV, radio, half an hour on computer, phone charging/hub and things on standby came to £1 for the day.  We could see how an easy 10 to 20p savings could be achieved each day without stress.

The dreaded greenhouse build continues - all frame work done including fixing to concrete, fitting window vents and double doors.  Just the glass to do.  Glass has arrived in 10 boxes, none of which are labelled in any way, not even in the printed panel that says "Contents:.....".  So we have a lovely plan with labelled panes showing different sizes and positions but no way of knowing in which of the 10 boxes each set of A, B, C. etc are in!!   Grr......

This greenhouse build is driving us nuts!

I usually write with enthusiasm about anything in the garden, but this flat pack greenhouse build is doing "our heads in"!..  Seven days (took weekend off) of messing about from 10 till 4 each day and we are still playing around with the frames.  The doors were built twice, (and there are double doors) and we were still puzzling and adjusting when we found a note that said "these probably won't slide easily until you put in the glass to give the doors weight".
Engineering son rang with supportive advice, neighbours pop in with cheery advice, and we are on chocolate biscuit packet no 2 and hot cross bun pack 3.

When will it end?  Really feel we should have paid the nice man at the garden centre to do the build.  Is there a difference between being thrifty and being really silly???

At least we have had some sunshine days and managed to have afternoon tea in the garden. Then enjoy some really beautiful sunsets this week.

In the front garden which is more sheltered by hedges and trees we seem to be developing some lovely patches of violets.  I have not seen the like for many years, I remember banks of these in the woods of my Hampshire childhood.

Hares

Fabulous Fabric Giveaway on the Sew Scrumptious blog today. Win a 'Spring Hare' bundle plus a metre of fabric of your choice! 
enter via the blog.http://sewscrumptious.blogspot.co.uk/…/sew-scrumptious-fabu

…
I love hares. Saw half a dozen recently in a field near Outwell, (Norfolk). Playing around with great abandon ignoring the farm dog trapped on the other side of the dyke/waterway.  So near yet so far.

Sometimes see them in the next field and we are sure they come and nibble stuff in our field too.

Simplicity sewing competition

My free pattern arrived from SimplicityNewLook this week and I decided to try it out on the third piece of fabric my daughter in law gave me for Xmas.

Here it is hung over the door, it has a wide pattern on both ends and has some silver glittery threads in the pattern. It is very light weight and may stretch on this neck line.   I made a blouse not long ago with another piece R gave me with a similar wide pattern along one edge so I have experience of getting the fabric pattern to run round the bottom edge!

The competition says you can alter the look so I have decided I will have short sleeves for a start.



My husband is having the day off from greenhouse building to watch the Rugby so I am spending the afternoon playing with the cutting out!

My apologies to anyone following me who I have not contacted - I am struggling with Bloglovin!

Growing a wild flower meadow - free seeds!

Some time ago I found a free give away from Kew Gardens/Lottery funding for wild meadow seeds. These arrived the other afternoon in a very smart pack.

The seed packets cover 2 sq metres and  include corn chamomile, corn marigold, corn poppy, corn flower, hedge bedstraw, lady's bedstraw, lesser knapweed, meadow buttercup, meadow sweet, oxeye daisy, red champion and ribworth plantain.  And there is a mini bee house in the pack!
I shall be putting these down the far end of our plot where we have planted a natural species hedge along the dyke and about 12 natural species trees to form a "coppice" (one day),
There is a web site www.growwilduk.com  encouraging us all to grow more wild flowers in the UK.

I am very grateful for these seeds as the ground was previously grazed by horses and apart from clover and thistles there was little evidence of wild flowers in the field when we moved here last July.

I really would like to show my grandchildren the wonderful meadow flowers I enjoyed in rural Hampshire of my youth.

Smart meter

We had a free smart meter fitted on Monday that reads our electric useage. Its quite interesting and sparked a lot of discussion. As we have been busy we have not had too much time to experiment but one or two things have already shown up.
1. When the house is at " rest" at night or we are outside the standby stuff and clocks use 30 watts continuously,  Hubby says that is £12 per annum.
2. There was an extension lead in the lounge with a fuse and light indicator, I think it had a surge breaker in it for the computers which we brought years and years ago.  When I unplugged it the reading dropped 70 watts!  Err - think I may bin that!
3. Dont stand near the meter when you turn on the electric shower - it goes red and shoots up. Yikes!

More power use monitoring is bound to take place and I am sure we will find other things to improve use!

Day 3 of the greenhouse build.

Today was grey again with the temperature staying around 7C. Slow progress in the morning until my husband took the last side of the greenhouse apart and started again measuring the door aperture to make sure it stayed straight at 80.15 cms width. After that it fell into place and by 4.30 all the walls were up!

Retreated to the settee for more tea and a warm up, especially as my husband;s arthritis kicked in and his ankle gave way causing him to fall over one of the struts and bend it.  Doctor recommended more Vitamin D earlier in the week when we were discussing the degeneration of my left hip joint so we will be shopping for mackerel and salmon next week and upping our D intake!

In the middle of holding the sides up the post man arrived with a parcel which needed a signature!

More spring garden preparations

Our greenhouse arrived on Tuesday am in a series of boxes with a large book of instructions.

Two days later after endless tea, a Victoria Sponge, a packet of hot cross buns, half a pack of choc bikkies and a curry to warm ourselves up (it is thick fog this week) we are half way through the book.

I thought this retirement and gardening lark was suppose to be fun???
These instructions are worse than Ikea and as long winded as Ofsted criteria??
What I would give for a nice warm office or classroom to hang out in.......

Easter Sewing project with scraps

Had to wait in for a parcel today so sat by front bedroom window and did a quick craft project using scraps of felt and some of the decorative  stitches on my new sewing machine.  I am getting the hang of the start/stop button and my foot is no longer looking for the pedal!

Very much gurellia crafting - get an idea and develop it as I go along!

As for the waiting - delivery man left the parcel out the back without knocking just before 5pm!!

Its very dry here but so dull it feels cold and miserable - suppose to be better latter in the week when I have loads of gardening planned.

Summer wardrobe

Got excited by the over 10C temperatures one day last week and went through my summer wardrobe. I wrecked quite a few clothes last summer when we moved to Norfolk what with dismantling stables, cutting down overgrown garden and painting fences!   Still plenty of blouses and tops left over from work  and 3 pairs of shorts.  Three "going out" dresses and 4 summer cardigans. I have several bags of clothes that could be recycled into fabric and some lengths if I need to make some thing extra.
Not everything is suitable for our new life in retirement in the country but I am trying not to buy anything new in 2015! Besides saving money there is the issue of space in this much smaller house and I need to reduce the storage!
Some things I have hacked about and others just needed altering a bit. This blouse for example I have had for about 10 summers, it is still in good condition probably because it had the most uncomfortable sleeves that cut into the elbows.  Wore it to the office now and again but was always glad to change at 5pm! So today I cut the sleeves off and made them into plain short sleeves.  Hopefully I will get some more wear out of it.

Progress towards Spring

Lots of family distractions this week but we managed to take advantage of a very dry week here in Norfolk to get on with our garden.  Our poly tunnel is progressing slowly and now has a floor. We wanted to get the ground covered to start the process of killing off the turf.  In fact it was easier to lay this without the poly tunnel being covered as we could reach in and out of the hoops and rails.

Our green house will be here next week.  More building for the husband!  I will be glad for both things to be finished as the conservatory is overfull with seedlings. All are doing well except the brassicas as the early cabbages, cauli and Brussel sprouts all have suffered "damping off".

Sewing competitions and a free pattern offer!

Surprise winner of the Sewing Bee, he had been a good second all the way through and then produced some great last minute garments.

 On the Simplicity New Look web site there is a competition to make one of 3 garments and show it on your blog.  You email them your details and they send you a pattern!

http://www.simplicitynewlook.com/blog/searching-simplicitys-star-sewist/#.VQSuHY6sVc8

Closing date 31 May

Trouser pattern

I have started to make my new trousers using a size 16 pattern (freebie) for which I am perfect except in the front tum area!  So I tacked up the whole garment to check fit before going too far.

The back fits perfectly but I have had to let out the front darts and increase the size at the front seam.
As I paid only £3.60 for the material I am happy to play around!

I visited Sew magazine web site earlier and there are a couple of free summer dress patterns on their templates that I shall download later.

Another inspirational bit of TV!

So much of TV programming is rubbish these days but I do enjoy the current format of using art and craft competitions to inspire us to do more creative stuff.  I see Sky Arts has now changed it "Portrait Artist of the Year"  to "Landscape Artist of the Year".   I will look forward to this!

I am currently enjoying the BBC2 painting challenge as they show lots of different techniques and subjects.

The sewing bee final next week - this series has been really tough.  I don't think I can do some of that stuff!

Recycling an nineties dress into a blouse

Inspired by the Sewing Bee I had started to be more adventurous with my remakes!  I loved this long flared dress in the 1990s and kept it even though my "apple" shape no longer suited its narrow waist.

I decided to bottom half would make a nice blouse and I could reuse the button through as the front. During one of my not infrequent insomniac nights I had an idea of making the top of the blouse in a yoke form and gather the skirt as a blouse into it. Looked on the internet and saw a few designs along the lines I had in mind. I looked at all my existing patterns and nothing was yoked but I found an old blouse in the recycle bag and carefully cut the yoke off to make a basic pattern and then extended it down a bit as I did not want to fiddle about with the yoke finishing mid armhole!

Actually the flared skirt was too much and I took out two of the "panels" and used them for the yoke pieces. I decided the black blouse design of a band round the neck would work on my design so cut some 4 inch wide bias strips too. 

I used my dress form to pull the blouse together and worked making the pieces come together working on inside out; this is very handy but I still like to tack it all together and try it on before stitching

!

This will be fine for working round the house and garden and is loose enough for a thin long sleeve jumper under if needed.  
I am still left with the top half of the dress for a future project. Hope I don't have to lay awake to think up a new idea!

Seed sowing outdoors

Beautiful day!  My husband ran the rotovator over the veg bed again yesterday and the wind dried it this morning.  It was used as horse grazing field for 4 or 5 years previously and we have cut into the turf to develop the veg bed. It is going to be up hill work to get the couch grass out.

Today we directly sowed into the ground beetroot, parsnips,carrots in 30 ft rows.  We may loose some but we may be lucky and get some early food. Our autumn sown onions and garlic are doing well. I may put a row of onion sets next to the carrots tomorrow for a later crop.  I spotted some flower buds on the broad beans today - they are still quite short, probably due to the open nature of our field and the strong winds we have!

The weather  is promising to continue good and my husband started up his mower just to get ready - he is preparing for a flush of grass!

We are expecting a delivery of black membrane tomorrow to line the floor of our polytunnel.  We are going to do this before we put on the plastic so we can pop in and out the sides and fix down the edges.  This membrane will kill the grass while we are finishing off the second set of doors and putting on the plastic.  We need two or three days of calm sunny weather before we can do the covering - may have to wait (patiently).

Spring is definitely round the corner here in North Norfolk, if only the wind would die down a bit more.  Our neighbour has been out ploughing in his market garden plot while we are struggling to hang doors on our polytunnel.

Meanwhile I have been experimenting with my new sewing machine.  After 50 years of sewing with foot controls my brain is having trouble communicating!!  I keep pressing and lifting my right foot on nothing instead of telling my finger to press the go/stop button.

I have tried out the embroidery stitches on the white collar of this toddlers sun dress I have been making for my grand daughter.

It was a free pattern in my Sew magazine copied on to some Amazon packing paper, the collar and bodice lining was an wanted white office type  blouse and the buttons on the back were out of the button  box. The material is cotton/polyester at £3.50 per meter and this took just about 80% of the meter to make.  So quite a frugal sew!

Potential savings on electricity

The other day we received an offer from our power supplier offering a FREE SMART meter.  This would measure our usage in detail and even indicate which appliances are using the electric most on an easy to read digital screen.  Woppee! Something useful and free!  We could solve the arguments about equipment stand by costs!

After trying the 0800 number three times the same day I finally got to talk to someone.  Answered loads of questions and agreed to their remote checking of the SMART meter to adjust our billing pattern.  Did not mind this as my husband double checks their every move and argues regularly about their calculations and charges!

Q. Where is your meter?  A. In the Front hall.
Q. Is it accessible? A.Its on the wall.  Above the door.
Q. Is the door higher than 7 feet?  A. The door isn't but the meter is above it, so probably about 7 feet - although I have never measured it. Why? I am an older person and I can stand on a chair and read it easily when you want the readings from me.  And I bet a good percentage of older houses have fuse boxes up high. And fuse boxes located in small low under stairs cupboards can cause as much injury if not more to your back in my experience.

Reply.
Oh no, you can't have one its too high for our operatives. They cant work above 7 ft, We'll have to think about it, do a health and safety risk assessment. Goodbye.

What???  A worker capable of disconnecting a mains fuse box and setting up equipment but can't stand on something 12 inches off the ground?

Husband fired off a complaint and within a few days the power company offered to send TWO men round in 3 weeks time.  One to stand on the 12" specially supplied stool to reach the 7 ft 4 inch fuse switch and one to hold his coat!!!

I will let you know when its fitted and if it tells us anything helpful to reduce electricity usage.

Weather forecasts

Its a very windy day here in North Norfolk and the lunch time weather forecast says it is 23 mph.  What does that mean when I look out the window?  I see trees thrashing about, twigs blowing off, any rubbish flying in the air, and its difficult to walk!   I am not sure that is 23 miles per hour.

In the past weather forecasts used the Beaufort scale to actually describe the wind force - I think today is definitely  " Whole trees in motion. Effort needed to walk against the wind..  Force 7.  Its a pity the forecasters don't use this nowadays!

Well, it is so windy two things have been delayed - I refused to battle down to the village to pick up my prescription and the last lot of hedging which arrived today is going to stay in the packaging till tomorrow. In this latest selection my husband has included a dog rose, which is one of my most favourite hedgerow plants.  When I see dog roses I know its a full British summer to enjoy.



We are developing a wild hedge and small copse at the end of our land and we are hoping our mix of planting in the grasslands develops wildlife and flowers as well.
It may take several years to develop.