Chairs to match the table and knitted seat covers

I went shopping for chairs to match our new kitchen table last Thursday. I pretty much knew in my mind what I was looking for - pine, spindle backed chairs. Something simple, possibly handmade so that they had character and weren't perfectly identical.

I went into a local shop that makes wooden furniture, had a look around the warehouse/showroom and found so many lovely things. Enquiring about the price of some chairs I liked, I found that my estimates on price were about half of the label prices in store - ouch!

I asked what else they had to offer at a lower price and embarrassingly (at first) the manager was summoned from upstairs. He asked what I was looking for and offered me a set of chairs that had been used for display with a large discount. They were still very slightly more than I'd hoped to pay but keeping in mind the amount I saved when I bought the table, I haggled to include free delivery and handed over my debit card. New chairs to match the table - yay!!

I freegled my old table and chairs, which were collected at 4:30pm on Friday, and the new chairs were delivered at 5pm - it was so uncomplicated that felt like it was meant to be.

Over the weekend there has been a frenzy of knitting as I made the first seat cushion - freestlyling with no pattern, as usual!

It's the biggest thing I've knitted so far but my knitting has gotten much faster and the chunky wool is amazingly easy to work with.

Two viewings of Julie & Julia, Mastercrafts on the Iplayer and some lovely chat on twitter with Florence & the Machine in the background kept me company as I knitted my way through three balls of rainbow wool. I finished it on Sunday afternoon.

I'm really pleased with it, it's comfy and it's simple enough to throw in the washing machine if we have any kitchen accidents.

I have another three to knit, but now that there's a comfy chair for Cameron to sit in, I'm going take my time on the others.

Making Jam with Strawberries (from Morocco...)

You wouldn't normally find fresh ingredients in my kitchen that are really out of season - frozen, canned or preserved, perhaps, but not fresh.

We popped to the supermarket on Friday night and I was rather offended by a huge display of fresh (I use this word loosely) strawberries about to go out of date and already looking well past their best. They were reduced to 39p per punnet and people were glancing at them, seeing the state they were in and - quite rightly - walking on by.

I'm pleased that people aren't buying strawberries (from Morocco) in March. If there isn't a market for such things then perhaps supermarkets will stop supplying them. I hope that will be the case anyway.

I stood and thought about what would happen to those strawberries, at midnight, when they were pulled off the shelves. Their fate was almost certainly a bin, and a freegan (if they exist in our small town) probably wouldn't have gone for them in the state they'd be by then either.

I felt bad. I wasn't responsible but I felt bad about it anyway. Wasting food is such an awful thing and there's really no good reason for it.

So I did something I never usually do - I bought strawberries in March. I filled my basket with some of those sad, reduced-price strawberries and brought them home to make jam, hoping that the supermarket wouldn't count my purchase as a sign that I want to buy out of season produce regularly.

I used a basic strawberry jam recipe from this book - which I really love, it explains things in such a simple way and has helped me get over my preserving-related fears!

The jam is amazingly delicious, despite the questionable strawberries.

Happy Mother's Day

Origami Paper Stars

I've been trying out some of the window star designs with origami paper. I had thought they'd be quite similar, but the intricacy of the window star designs tends to come from the light passing through them so I need to find some origami designs, really.

I've found this origami stars group on flickr which is very inspirational.

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend - I intend to spend much of mine digging at the allotment, weather permitting. If you have some spare time, you could have a go at the Home Baked Challenge for March!

Learning to crochet

Try crochet is No. 45 on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I've been toying with little bits of crochet techniques, in a rather non-committal way - like the edges of my rainbow coasters - for a while, just learning by doing and seeing what I'm capable of.

As is my approach to most things, I read up a little bit about it and then went off completely in my own direction. There's something about a recipe, pattern or list of instructions that makes me uncomfortable - I feel I just have to freestyle.

I also didn't begin with using wool/yarn. I found a big bag of thin ribbon in a charity shop just before Christmas and snapped it up. I thought it'd be perfect for constructing a table mat out of and I couldn't have been more right. The texture and weight is delightful and it was lovely and smooth to work with.

This was my first time at trying to crochet in a circle. I made an error at first by going in a spiral rather than circular steps with the centre colour which is why there's a flaw in the first stripe transition. I managed to regain the circular shape in the end, though, and really like how the table mat turned out.

Allotment Snapshot

The allotment has become a sanctuary lately - a place to be completely and refreshingly unplugged from the rest of the world. A place where all our efforts are physically and often immediately visible.

I snapped this picture of Cameron yesterday showing his developing gardener's stance!

Preserving Childhood

I'm reading this excellent book at the moment (don't let the title put you off, it isn't religious). So much of what the author says resonates with the approach I'm trying to take to parenting, and life in general.

After spending far too many hours tonight listening to the Children's Schools and Families bill being discussed in the House of Lords, I wanted to share, here, a couple of quotes from the book, which I think are really relevant to what's going on.
The emphasis in bold is my own.

"... in our efforts to make each moment "count", we seem to have lost the knack of appreciating the ordinary... we do too much and savour too little. We mistake activity for happiness, and so we stuff our children's days with activities, and their heads with information when we ought to be feeding their souls instead..."


"... only by stopping long enough to observe our surroundings can we bring form and meaning to our lives and make the small adjustments needed to stay on course.
Our children need this kind of pause, too. Regular rest for the spirit is as necessary for their healthy growth as sleep, fresh air and good food..."

"... children need time that is utterly their own - time to take up residence in their own lives, time to dream through an afternoon, time to play with the kids next door, time to wake up to their own pleasures. Above all, they need time when we adults aren't calling the shots..."

"Children need their privacy just as we adults do. In the secret places of childhood, the soul drinks deeply, is refreshed, and flourishes..."

I said I wasn't going to get political on this blog, and I'm sticking by that decision. But quite often, I think many grown-ups have forgotten what it was like to be a child. I strongly believe that those people are not qualified to be making decisions about how our children spend their own precious childhoods.