Ten things to do while waiting forever for soap to trace

Posted by louisa on Friday 25 February 2011 in frugal, making, soap | 6 comments

1. Stare blankly out of the window (I did this a lot).

2. Gyrate your hips at the same speed/direction as the whisk for a lower back workout. (Warning: if you do this for a few minutes, it feels really weird when you stop .)

3. Wonder if that itch on your cheek is just an itch or a splash of caustic soap which will burn your entire face off. Itch or disfiguring splash? ITCH OR DISFIGURING FACE BURNING SPLASH?!! Oh, itch.

4. Look up “mixture not tracing” in the troubleshooting section of your soap making book and in a spate of paranoia, decide it’s all those problems together, even the ones that directly contradict each other and also worry that even though the itch on your cheek has stopped, perhaps it’s slowly melting YOUR ENTIRE SKULL.

5. Grow concerned for your mental state.

6. Have a cup of tea to calm down.

7. Think it’s finally tracing because it’s getting harder to stir, then realise no, it’s not tracing, it’s just your arm is getting really, really tired.

8. Wonder if it’ll ever trace. Ever, ever, ever.

9. Decide this is boring and a ballache and should never be attempted again.

10. Decide that once it’s reached trace and is poured into molds to take the dog for a walk and while you’re out go to Netto to buy more oil so you can started another batch this afternoon (I like grinding new skills – ie trying them multiple times in quick succession).

It’s been a long day.

Portable chicken run from scrap wood & wire

Posted by louisa on Friday 18 February 2011 in chickens, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

I was in a bit of a sulk this morning. My weekends – now that the weather is getting better – usually involve playing out in the garden, or at least cooking up treats in the kitchen but this weekend, I’m out all day, both days, at a youth theatre event with the group I help teach. The event should be fun but, you know, not playing in the garden or making sugar-packed goodies. So I was sulking about losing my play time – until I realised there was nothing stopping me playing out this afternoon instead. Even after five years of self-employment, I still feel naughty playing out during a workday – but as soon as I realised I could, I was up and running for the box of screws and our scrap wood supplies.

I find it funny that I get so excited about making things from wood these days because a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of doing it. I’m quite a practical girl – I worked as a labourer one summer during uni and I’m happy to get my hands/clothes/face dirty with paint or mud or what-have-you – but I always thought that making things from wood was a Big Serious Skill that wasn’t for my sort. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because we didn’t really do any big woodwork stuff at school – we did stuff on “resistant materials” (which included bits of woodwork as well as electronics and stuff with plastic/metal) and I remember making little bits of jewellery out of wood and plastic – but it was little things, nothing practical.

I think I started to get converted after we moved into this house just over a year ago – I wanted some airing shelves inside the boiler cupboard so I went over to the DIY shop across the road, bought some 38mm by 19mm lengths, and made them. I think I did a pretty good job – I made them easily removable in case we needed better access to the boiler and they’ve not fallen down yet. Then I decided I wanted a wellie stand for outside and after getting some advice from a friend who is handy with a saw & screws and a scramble around our scrap wood store, we had a shiny new wellie station in a couple of hours. And that’s when the addiction started. I’m not great at it by any means but every time I make something, I learn something new and have tons o’fun :)

Anyway, this afternoon’s project was a portable chicken run so I could let the chickens out of their main run more. I was inspired by Kate from Living the Frugal Life‘s poultry schooner – it would let me use the chickens to weed and de-slug the veg beds but wouldn’t need me watching over them the whole time (or chasing them around the woods when they got the taste of freedom). I wanted to do a hoophouse thing like Kate’s but didn’t have any material to make the hoops – so I ended up making a boring wood frame instead. At least it was all the boring wood was scrap so free though :)

I made the ends first and was a little surprised by how sturdy they were ;)

The sturdiness was beneficial as the only long lengths I could find were lighter than desirable – but with the sturdy end frames and some supporting struts in the middle, it still felt strong enough. So far, so good.

January – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in goals, less than 12 clothes challenge, meta | 13 comments

Just a quick post reviewing my progress on my various goals/spending, and about tracking other stuff that I may or may not have mentioned.

(I mentioned this on Twitter – I’d had this bunting for a while and John surprised me by putting it up in our dining room. Pretty!)

Goals in 2011 progress

I haven’t really achieved any of my goals for 2011 yet – early days, early cold days. I think we’ve baked something every week so far though and I’ve also started tracking of usage of more consumables (FYI – but possibly TMI too – it takes us 6 days to use a toilet roll), so that’s a start. I also built some things from wood for the garden, which will help me with my piece-of-furniture making goal.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I haven’t bought clothes this month so my tally for the year is still at zero. (More info about the challenge…)

I did look at stuff in the sales online at the start of the year but wasn’t persuaded by anything. And last week, I went into a few shops that sell clothes amongst other things (mostly charity shops) – but I put my blinkers on and went straight for the other stuff – homeware things – instead of looking at clothes. It’s quite a poor area so the vast majority of the clothes are cheap makes – I don’t mind buying some of my items from charity shops but I want to avoid poor quality clothes wherever they are sold.

Growing stuff & the chickens

Since it’s still chilly winter, not much is happening on the growing front. I sowed some winter gem lettuce near the start of the month and they’re still tiny, but getting bigger by the day. We also had some fruit trees delivered – six apples and two pears – and John’s planted those out now. I also bought two blackcurrant bushes – I feel like we’re making good progress in the perennial fruit situation now.

The chickens have enjoyed the factionally longer days and the mostly warmer weather – and the two black rocks both started laying mid-month. Lime is still moulting and Buff is still refusing to give up the goods, but we’ve had a solid five eggs a day from the other five nearly every day for the last fortnight. We’ve had 109 eggs in total for January – not bad going since it was just one or two a day at the start of the month! (Also, in late breaking news, some of the chickens are currently grounded – I let them out to play again yesterday and someone, Ginger I think, led the parade into the wooded bit of our garden – it took me about half an hour to catch them all again!)

Wooden planters made from scrap wood

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

Last week, I got the cravings – the “I NEED to make something out of wood” cravings – so I set Saturday aside for playing.

I actually set out into the garden to make one thing but found some planks (the long bits in the picture) that would be much more appropriate for something else on my to-do list – wooden planters. John’s dad had brought them for us last week – he regularly collects scraps of wood from a joiners’ yard for firewood and when he visited that day, they gave him these salvaged planks too – but he thought they were too good for firewood so they ended up in our general scrap lumber pile instead. The shorter bits in the picture are also scrap wood from the same source – all roughly about the same size so almost no sawing required!

With that scrap, and five 6ft long battens (leftover from when I built removable shelves in our airing cupboard), I made two planters – each about 4ft long by 1ft, by about 9ins deep.

The bases are different because each batten made exactly one long length and two shorter lengths – I was delighted to find it was pretty much exact, again minimal sawing! – and that was the most efficient way to make use of the wood.

I’ll use a liner of some sort in the planters and puncture that between the slats of the base for drainage. I added little feet to the bottom (in a way appropriate to the base) to raise the slats off the ground too. The whole thing will need treating with some veg-safe preservative too, to maximise it’s usefulness.

Neither planter would get me a job as an artisan woodworker or would be used as a practical example to teach even spacing or the concept of right angles – but they’ll grow salad (or similar) as well as planters that would cost me £50 each from a garden centre. Plus I had loads of fun making them :)

I think these will go in the front garden – we have some dead space out there which I’d like to make useful this year. Not sure exactly what we’ll plant in them yet – I really need to get on with planning where everything is going to go this year!

Some thoughts on my newly rediscovered love of crochet

Posted by louisa on Friday 28 January 2011 in crochet & knitting, making | 11 comments

After a break from crafts for a while, I’ve got back into crochet with a vengeance recently.

I found it hard to like crochet at first – the first tutorials I did were boring, just creating a stiff solid fabric – and it wasn’t until I made a “net” shopping bag and granny squares that I saw the value of it over knitting. If I was teaching someone how to crochet, I’d start with granny squares which I’d use for the base of a “net” shopping bag/fruit bag – I liked being able to make something actually useful very quickly.

I love the many “sense of completion” moments when making granny squares or similar patches. My first big project was a hexagon hearth rug. I got a small buzz after completing each round, then each hexagon, then each colour combination set, then all the hexagons… Great motivation to keep me going. By comparison, my current stripes project (above) is very slow going and not that rewarding – it takes about 25 mins to finish each stripe and then it’s only one more stripe in a blanket of a hundred (and it’s even more when I do the wrong colour combination and have to frog over an hour’s work). It’s a nice yarn to work with though and when it’s finished, it’ll be lovely.

My favourite stitch is a HTC (HDC in US terms) – the ease of a DC (SC) but with extra height. Is it wrong/nerdy to have a favourite crochet stitch?