Sewing Face Wipes

Today has been a bit of a washout so I have been getting some small sewing jobs done.  The main thing I did was to create some more of the face wipe pads that I made for a colleague earlier in the week.  I have made little sets of eight with a wash bag to put the dirty ones in and then I listed two sets on Etsy and two on Folksy.  I don't know if they will have any interest but with the current trend towards using reusable items over throw away ones lets hope that is something that more people will adopt.  They will certainly not go to waste.

I love the fact that these use up small amounts of fabric, these ones match but they don't have to so there is no reason why every bathroom can't have a set.  

It is cotton jersey, soft side up on the back and feels really soft.  Simple zig  zag stitch as my overlocker was not making a great go of such a small curve.  If I made them a bit bigger it was fine but then they are a less handy shape.  I think people sometimes like thing to be similar to the originals and these are more like the removal pads you buy in terms of size.

I also had to take a photo of this lovely plant, the hot pink seems to be theme this week.

Yesterday when I was out watering I snapped a few more pictures of the garden, it makes me happy that just a few months ago this was bare and these plants were just seeds in a packet.  We did wonder if we were able to fill the space with what I was growing in the greenhouse, we needn't have worried.

It is a bit crowded and wild at the moment but I don't mind I like the colour.

Ignore the odd bits of wood next to the fence, they are temporarily filling gaps one of the dog keeps making.

As one thing stops flowering another thing starts so that has been good.

The stone circle you can see in this image had an evacuation of flying ants the other day they were everywhere!  It happens every year and we always have lots of ants on our garden, I should have been quick and got an image of that for you.

Well that's all for now have a good weekend.

Green Things

This past week I caught up on watching Hugh's War on Plastic, it is pretty unsettling stuff I have to say and a lot of it just leaves you feeling a bit helpless.  We try to do our best but as the show highlighted, the shops don't make it easy for you and there is also the fact that as fast as we are trying to reduce our consumption the manufacturers are setting targets to increase output of the stuff.

I was asked this week by a colleague to make some reusable scrubbies for taking off make-up, she had bought some from a shop and wanted more.  I used materials I had and made twelve small circular ones and a little drawstring bag to wash them in.  I had a nice photo to share but yesterday my phone did an update and now everything is in the wrong place and all the photo's taken before yesterday have transferred small and out of focus!  I am disappointed about that and will get my son to look at it when he is home later, as I am not one of the phone generation it will take me twice as long to sort it.

This evening I have been altering t-shirts for another colleague, she buys them and then likes them shorter, with smaller sleeves and a lower neck.  It is one way of getting what you want, a lot of people won't shop charity shops but if they did they would see that you can buy things you love cheaply then get them altered.  It is still often cheaper than buying new and you can have them fitted to you.

It seems there is a lot of action from the public on reducing our consumption but very little from the government or big business. I still see a lot of unnecessary  packaging everywhere and lots of plastic that doesn't serve a purpose.  My husband just feels I think too much about these things but there are too many people who don't think about it at all perhaps.  A lot of the plastic free shops are in affluent areas also and I would imagine many people struggling on a tight budget are more worried about buying  affordable food for the week than they are about our long term futures on the planet.

On a lighter note summer term is almost over, there is lots of winding down going on, people moving on and new faces appearing at work.  I was sad to say goodbye to a colleague today, she  started at the same time as me and has been wonderful to work with.  I am sure we will be seeing her again soon.  She very kindly bought me this plant and I will leave you with an image of that after my initial grumpy start over the state of the planet.

A Day Out

We have had a bit of a change today and went out for the afternoon, my husband had booked a day off so we thought we would make the most of it.  We went  to Cleethorpes, we haven't been there for years and it is only an hour away. As it is a Friday we thought it wouldn't be too busy as most people go for the weekend and don't set off until Friday teatime.  It was still quite busy as lots of people were there with young children, there were also a couple of school trips on the beach.  Unfortunately we couldn't take the dogs down onto the sand but walked along the front instead.

 It has been a good day for the weather, the sun did keep disappearing behind a cloud and it was very breezy but I have to say that is better for the dogs.  If it had been blazing sunshine we would have had to get them out of the heat after a short walk, but with the wind and the cloud we managed a good walk.

There was also a lovely boating pond (no boats on it!) full of ducks that we walked around and had our picnic there. We were very prepared today, icepacks in the rucksack, sandwiches, tomatoes, crisps and drinks.  We also managed to park around the corner from one of the main car parks for free, very frugal!

This one clearly is clearly after some food, we didn't feed it as we didn't have  appropriate food.

 This area was beautiful and very well kept.

There was a path leading to a nature reserve, we didn't take that as it involved walking through long grass and two of us had bare legs, I am a bit cautious of getting a tick from long grass having seen one they are hideous things!

We didn't choose to walk around the town after but headed home before the work traffic started to build up, we always try and plan any outing around the least possible traffic.

When I got home I managed to get a load of weeding done and re-pot one of my planters with some of my seedlings from the greenhouse.  I have quite a lot of black flies/aphids on some of my plants I am finding the only solution where there are so many is to remove the affected plants.  It is not too bad as I have spent very little and the garden is full of colour at the moment, all the seed planting paid off.