With the clocks going back on Sunday, I gained an hour in bed which was a treat, so I woke up feeling quite refreshed. Whilst lying in bed, and having finished my dungaree dresses, I felt inspired to delve into my scrap basket again and maybe do another scrap project, so I got the basket out and had a good sort through the fabrics.
I was looking for specific fabrics to use to make fabric yarn for weaving. I needed long strippy bits, approximately 3 cm in width to make into a kind of bias binding, which is then stitched into yarn to form balls of fabric yarn.
I pulled out lots of plain fabrics to begin with, as I wasn't sure how different prints would look once woven and as this is my first foray into weaving I decided to play safe to begin with. I can always weave some prints in as I go along, to create some contrast and pattern.
I had various fabric scraps that I could use, which were a combination of linen, cotton, polycotton and more synthetic fibres. They were mainly darks, but I did pull out a few lighter tones too.
After breakfast, I sat down at my sewing machine and began to sew all the different pieces together to make long lengths. I took a break for lunch and continued until 3pm. It took me until then to just prepare the fabric strips. I chopped up all the trimmings and bits of thread to go in my bag to use as stuffing and then called it a day.
The next stage, will be to fold the strips like bias binding and then stitch them together to form the yarn, but that will be a job for another day. Who new that the prep for this would take so long?
After putting my sewing machine away, I decided to catch up with a few jobs around the kitchen. The great thing about Sunday evenings is that the fridge is always virtually empty:
This is always very satisfying, to see that we eat virtually everything we buy and waste very little. In addition, it gives me the opportunity to clean the fridge ready for the week's grocery shopping to go in the next day. There was still food in it, mainly salad, vegetables and a few other bits. There was plenty of jam and pickled beetroot made from allotment harvests, but you can't live on bread and jam alone! (Well, you can if you really need to I guess)
Anyway, I then proceeded to clean out the freezer too. It had been a long time since I'd done it properly, and it wasn't that full, which made it much easier. It was a good opportunity to see exactly what we had in there. I pulled out the last two packs of gooseberries and blackcurrants from the allotment and later made them into one more large Kilner jar of jam. This helped to provide space for Xmas food to go in as I buy it over the next couple of months. There were already a few Xmas purchases in there. It looked so much better once it was done.
I didn't stop there. I took a look in the pantry cupboard. It's definitely not as full as it usually is. I've been using things and not replacing them, as I don't currently have the budget to overstock. I just buy what we need, as we need it at the moment. There's still plenty in there, such as lots of tins of soup and veg and fruit. I need to start using these up. The soups might be nice to have for lunch now the weather has turned colder. I used to take them to work, hence why there's so many.
The grey box, I used to fill with pasta and other dry goods, but it had very little in it, so I decided to put all my Xmas food purchases in there. Here's a picture of what I've bought so far:
Not a huge amount as yet, but it all helps to spread the cost in the lead up. I was shocked at how much the mini mince pies were the last time I saw them in Lidl - £3.50 for 9. It seemed a lot to me. I've got some shortcrust pastry in the freezer and half a jar of mincemeat from last year which is still good, so I'll definitely be making my own.
The last thing I did, whilst the jam was on the hob, was to make another apple crumble using the apples we got from OH's mum. There's still enough for one more crumble before they run out completely. Please excuse that I took out a spoonful to taste it. I put cinnamon in it for the first time and wanted to see how it tasted.
It felt good to get all these jobs done and use up some food we have sitting around. I now just need to figure out how to make banana cake, as I've got lots of overripe bananas in the freezer that need using. I'll keep you posted with how that goes, as I've never made it before, but if anyone has a recipe, please let me know it.
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