Week off fun: apple pressing, egg pickling, bread baking & bean bag making

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 October 2010 in charity shopping, cooking, making, preserving | 0 comments

Hurrah! My week off has started well.

Last week was a busy one – working as usual during the day, then in the evenings, Tuesday through to Sunday, I was at Bingley Little Theatre for one reason or another (mostly rehearsals/show nights for the weekend’s studio productions). That ate into my fun making-and-doing time somewhat so I’m glad I’ve got the week off this week to catch up on fun stuff.

When I got back from the theatre at 10:30pm on Friday night, John had just started pressing some apples for cider. We had to give back the borrowed fruit press at lunchtime on Saturday so I was enlisted to help. We pressed until just after midnight then again for a couple of frantic hours on Saturday morning – got through about 40lbs of apples – about half-and-half from John’s Grandma’s apple tree and windfall from John B (who also provided the loan of the press). We’ve got 2 gallons of cider on the go now and there were a few litres left over which John’s drinking as juice.

Sunday was chore day – I cleaned out the chicken coop as normal and let the girls out into the wider (not fenced in) garden for the first time too. Lime and Blue were the only ones interested in exploring and they de-weeded/scratch-scratch peeked the bed nearest to their coop. I’ll definitely use them again for that before planting out time next year!

So to yesterday – my first full day off. It started slowly, stretched out in the sun with the animals and catching up on the weekend papers, but then I pickled some more eggs (this time it was garlic & pepper, recipe to follow) and tried a new bread recipe for the first time, a new dough recipe to make layered rolls. When I’m learning how to bake something new, I like to “grind” it – a video game term for doing a repetitive task over and over again to “level up” – so I’m going to make those at least every other day this week. Mmm, bread rolls.

Later on, after a walk with the Lily dog, I made a giant bean bag for said hound – using a very retro-cool single duvet cover I found in a charity shop in Guiseley on Saturday. It was easy to make but I’ll write a full how-to soon, mostly because I have several comedy photos of the cats and dog “helping”.

Today has had another slow start but I think it’ll continue with some soup making, maybe some biscuit baking, some jamming (since we did our once-every-six-weeks shop last night and had to pull some blackberries out of the freezer to make way for half price ice cream), and since my sewing machine is out, some more stitchery. Woo!

Line drying – Petra’s peg airer

Posted by louisa on Saturday 9 October 2010 in frugal, green, making | 1 comment

One of my top 5 clothes line drying tips is to use a “peg clothes dryer thing” – it stops the little items taking up space on your main line and is easy to take inside if it starts raining.

Petra left a comment to say she’d made her own from “some electricity pipe, an old iron coat hanger, some rope and pegs”. I asked her to send a picture for inspiration for when I make my own and here it is:

How great is that! Simple but does exactly what it needs to do!

Thanks so much for sending over the picture, Petra!

How to make a piggy bank/money box

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in green, making, meta | 1 comment

Over on Recycle This today, I’ve asked:

What can I reuse or recycle to make a moneybox/piggy bank?

As I say in the post over there, my first project needing a moneybox is to retrospectively pay for the automatic chicken pophole door we bought last week. But I’d also like other piggybanks to set aside money for/from other projects – I find seeing money building up physically in a pot has considerably more motivation impact than when it’s building up symbolically in numbers on a bank statement.

So any suggestions on what I can do?

Quick crocheted flask/water bottle holder pattern

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 September 2010 in crochet & knitting, making | 0 comments

My building plans for last weekend (the mezzanine level thing and a mini ark for quarantine/broody hens) fell through because I felt ill so aside from a walk/forage at Bramley Falls park on Saturday and the sheep & goats in Calverley graveyard on Sunday, I spent most of the weekend sitting. I like sitting but it was frustrating to think of all the to-do tasks building up while I was lazing around.

In an effort to achieve at least one thing, I decided to make a flask holder/carrier – because I like taking a water flask out with me when we’re walking the dog but quickly get bored of carrying it.

It’s an adaptation of my never-fails crochet shopping bag pattern (which I should write up over here sometime) and is pretty quick and easy to make – an hour or so, maybe a little longer including the long strap.

Crocheted flask/water bottle holder pattern

Note: this pattern uses British crochet terminology. North America readers (etc) should revise accordingly: our DCs are your SCs, our TCs are your DCs etc.

To make this item, you need to know how to chain, DC, TC, join stitches to finish rounds and tie off. It’s not complicated at all but I fear parts of the pattern are a little confusing – let me know if you hit any problems.

Yarn & hook
This is a great project for using up the ends of yarn balls – it only uses about 20g. Choose a strong yarn, 4ply or DK, and a suitable sized hook – I think mine was a 5mm.

First post! Welcome to The Really Good Life

Posted by louisa on Thursday 24 June 2010 in admin | 1 comment

Hi, welcome to The Really Good Life. I’m Louisa and I live really well – but frugally.

I already write about reusing and recycling on my blog “How Can I Recycle This?“, and about composting on my site “Can I Compost This?“, as well as blogging and running other sites but I wanted a new place to talk specifically about growing, making, foraging, cooking – and living a frugal life in general.

The name of this blog was originally going to be something highfaluting and fancy but thinking about it the other day, I realised it boils down to this: I’m living a Really Good Life. Like Tom & Barbara, I live in a city (specifically squished between two industrial cities), I grow my own veg, our chickens will arrive shortly and we live cheaply & sustainable – but with tasty food & pretty things, inside of nasty homemade wine and scratchy woollen underwear.

This blog is about the journey I’m making – because it is a journey – my thoughts, my questions (that hopefully other people will be able to answer!) and where I’ve got some info to pass on, my recommendations & my mistakes – and I hope you enjoy it.