We *heart* books too (warning: picture heavy post!)

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 4 May 2011 in meta | 18 comments

Last week, Swirly Arts’ Lynsey wrote a blog post called “we *heart* books” and included photos of the many, many books around her house. Well, we *heart* books too so I thought I should do a similar post ;)

It’s a very picture heavy post so people on slow/expensive-per-MB connections may want to skip it! People who like perusing other people’s bookshelves though should probably settle in for a long session (all the pics, except for that first one, can be expanded if you want to nose properly ;) )

(And probably much to the annoyance of my mum, I didn’t tidy or dust at all before taking these pictures ;) )

Charity shopping, planting and making – my fun weekend :)

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 April 2011 in charity shopping, growing, making, wood stuff | 4 comments

Last night on Twitter, I asked people to put their hands up if they’d had a lovely afternoon in their garden/at their allotment yesterday and I got a sea of hands waving back – it is really bloody lovely out there at the moment, isn’t it?*

On Saturday, I blew my no spending month thing out of the window by going to a craft sale at Kirkgate Studios in Shipley – well, actually, I only bought two balls of wool and a postcard from there but since I was in Shipley… As with most poorer areas, you’re less likely to find exclusive designer goodies going for £1 but with eight charity shops, there is at least plenty of choice.

I bought 13 books. Thirteen! But 10 of them were (drama) work-related and two Monica Dickens books I’ve been considering buying off Amazon/Abebooks for a couple of months, so it wasn’t all spur-of-the-moment spend-spend-spend. Plus, eight of the books were in a 4-for-£1 offer so all 13 books cost £7.70 in total — not too bad. (And I’ve already found seven books to give away under my “buy 2, get rid of 1 old one” rule.)

I also bought a cute small plate to be our kitchen soap dish for 50p, another little dish for 50p because it was a tourist souvenir from Baghdad (and how often do you see those?) and a fake-patchwork duvet cover for £1.50, which I’ll turn into a cheat quilt like Lynsey’s from SwirlyArts made this time last year — again, something else I’ve been looking out for because I love Lynsey’s quilt so I was very happy to find it :)

Anyway, after all that spendery on Saturday, I declared Sunday would be a day for the garden. I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped (I’ll have to have some time off this week to get the rest finished) but I potted on lots of tomatoes & pumpkins, sowed nearly all my potatoes as well as more lettuce & annual herbs. I also made two new scrap wood planters – not the prettiest but certainly the easiest ones yet.

I believe the sides are old scaffolding planks or similar — John’s dad had a trailer full when we went over the other day. He said “they’ll be great for burning” until he saw me hugging them to my chest and squealing with planter-building delight. They’re about 3ft by 1ft by 8inches deep, with reclaimed decking for the bottom supports. Again, they’ll be lined but I think I’ll see how far I get cleaning them rather than painting them as I like the character of the wood. (Apologies for the somewhat shadowy photo – was in a hurry, camera battery was dying.)

I also made some super quick wire wall mounts for some herb pots in the greenhouse – I’ve run out of room on my staging/the floor at the moment so wanted these little pots (and five with baby sage seedlings in them) out of the way. I’ll have to make sure they don’t dry out too much but they’ll probably be fine for now.

Oh, and I also cleaned the windows for the first time this year on Saturday evening – they were, as you may expect, rather filthy but I did a rather good job, even if I do say so myself – not a single water spot in sight! ;)

* (People in parts of the US still in the soggy tailend of winter and people in the southern hemisphere who are heading into full on winter – sorry to gloat about our sunshine. We’re just not used to this nice weather in the UK and you know, talking about it is our national pastime.)

What did you get up to this weekend? Any frugal fun? Or planting progress?

Soap making book reviews: Soapmaking by Sarah Ade and The Natural Soap Book by Susan Miller Cavitch

Posted by louisa on Monday 7 March 2011 in making, soap | 1 comment

Ahead of making soap for the first time a fortnight ago, I bought and read two soap making books – I thought it would be best to get familiar with the techniques before I started playing with burn-your-flesh lye.

The books I bought were:

• ‘Soapmaking’ by Sarah Ade, part of the New Holland Self-Sufficiency series, and,
• ‘The Natural Soap Book: Making Herbal and Vegetable-based Soaps’ by Susan Miller Cavitch

Both came with glowing reviews on Amazon but, to be frank, neither book particularly did it for me. I spent a lot of time looking for what I thought would be the most suitable books but still, I may have had overly high expectations or completely wrong ones so I’ll start with some positives of both before I start with my criticisms.

Both are nice books to look at and easy to read. ‘The Natural Soap Book’ is particularly lovely – it’s printed in a lovely purple font on soft cream paper, with clear, relevant line illustrations. There is a lot of text in it – considerably more than ‘Soapmaking’ – but there is still enough “whitespace” to make it pleasant to read and not feel cluttered or dense.

Both books include pages on soap-making history & theory, useful information on the chemistry of soap making (saponification charts etc) and the characteristics of different oils/butters, and scents and other (natural) addictives. ‘The Natural Soap Book’ went a bit further, as you may expect from a more advanced book, but ‘Soapmaking’ provided a decent amount of information too.

But (and this is where the criticisms start) for all their talk about different soaps and oils/butters, the recipes seem lacking in variety. All but one recipe in each book contains olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil – not just in there a little bit, but the majority (fat) ingredients in every case. Now I know the authors are both experienced soap makers and I’m not so perhaps I’m wanting something that’s stupid, but I’d have liked different types of soap mentioned – a 100% olive oil recipe (since that was one of reasons I started looking at making soap), or some without palm oil or without coconut oil, or heck, without olive oil. It felt like there was a basic recipe that they always used (admittedly perhaps with good reason) and the only different thing was the essential oils or the odd bit of some special oil (‘Soapmaking’ was particularly guilty of this – they felt very much variations on a theme except for the liquid soap recipe in the “taking soap further” section).

A rubbish swap

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in charity shopping, frugal | 0 comments

We went to Southport yesterday to see my mum & dad.

We returned with:

• 8 empty egg boxes
• a 2ltr ice cream tub of baked & crushed egg shells
• 4 20 year old gallon demi johns
• several small glass jars for preserving
• 5 or 6 children’s DVDs (newspaper freebies)

We should have also brought back some logs & some kindling but it was too dark/wet to get them from the garden, so we’re leaving them there to season instead. They’ve also been collecting screw top wine bottles for our home brewing escapades but we forgot to collect them.

We took them surplus rather than “rubbish”. I forgot to take any jam for my part of the swap but took them fresh eggs from our hens and some of my leftover/spare veg seeds for my dad — I gave him some carrot, cucumber, cabbage, leek, salad onion, cat nip and cat grass.

As well as the swapping, we also got to have a run around on the sand dunes behind my old school and went charity shopping/second-hand book shopping. We got six books: two fiction ones, one social theory book on how mothers are scapegoated in contemporary society, Graham Chapman’s biography, one of Steven Pinker’s books & a book on the history of Bradford (irony!) – so later today I’ll have to find 3 of ours to get rid of now, as per my recent book limiting policy.

A distinct lack of seaside rock & candy floss but otherwise a good “rubbish” swap – lots of items set for landfill/recycling, will be put to good use!

New books in, old books out

Posted by louisa on Friday 8 October 2010 in decluttering | 0 comments

I went on a bit of a book buying spree one evening last week – a combination of Amazon new & used, and Abebooks. Unusually for me, all of the books were fiction – I think I’m subconsciously preparing for a winter of reading in front of the stove.

Six packages arrived one morning – our poor postman – and to make the most of it, I stretched out opening them over the next few days. I love opening parcels containing brand new books – the flatness of the pages, that fab new book smell – and compared to that, opening new-to-me used books is a more varied, often disappointing experience if the books are in a poorer condition than expected — but that’s usually fleeting and I’d prefer to have cheaper, used books than that new-book experience any day.

When I was talking about the hidden costs of hoarding a few months ago, I decided that I’d have a new policy when it came to buying books to avoid our (extensive) book collection spinning out of control: for every two books I buy, I have to get rid of an existing one.

So I got nine books in and this is my five out:

A couple of old fiction books, a judgemental poor man’s Louis Theroux book about the US, a how-to book on soft furnishings which I bought at the wrong end of my interest in soft furnishings, and a coffee table book on Art Deco artefacts/ornaments.

With Dan’s great suggestion for using Library Thing as a way to remember books rather than keeping the physical copies, I don’t have to worry about forgetting the fiction ones, so all these will be heading off to a charity shop soon!