Tuesday 7 January 2014

Busy Crafting Day and Picking Up Bargains

What a busy day I had yesterday. No time to write a new post last evening because I was trying to finish of these.







 DH requested gloves to go with his Doctor Who scarf and as I had wool left over I got to work. I found the first one fiddly as its a long time since I knitted gloves, but I finished it off yesterday afternoon and made the second one during the evening. Once again the colours aren't quite accurate as I took the picture at around 11pm.

Before I finished off that first glove I spent the first part of yesterday afternoon sewing together the messenger bag pieces I'd prepared on Sunday. The request was for something tortoise related as a gift for DD2 to give to a friend.



It was mostly plain sailing but being me I didn't stick entirely to the instructions and I think I made life a bit harder than it needed to be. I'm very  pleased with the results and think I'll have a go at making myself something similar, but next time I'll be doing it the right way instead of Helen's way!



 Before my afternoon and evening crafting spree I'd avoided the rain showers and nipped into town to get that second pair of £4 jeans for DH. At first they didn't seem to have any as the stand they'd been on had been removed, but I found some on another rack. Looking through there was only one pair in his size and they didn't have the reduced sticker on them. Most of the others on the rack did but they were all big sizes. Thinking that maybe it was only the big sizes remaining on the offer I nearly left it, but then thought if I don't ask I might miss a bargain and I'm happy to say DH now has 2 new pairs of jeans at £4 each.

On the way home I popped into Morrisons for some apples and checked out their reduced fresh green grocery stand. Must have been my lucky day because I got 3 big punnets of fresh raspberries for 55p each.



When I got them home and weighed them there was nearly 4 lbs raspberries for a total cost of £1.65. They were lovely raspberries too, not squishy or anything. I rinsed them and drained them and they were overflowing my colander.


 I added a few to a sugar free raspberry jelly for dessert.




The rest I laid out on lined baking trays and put in the freezer. When they were frozen I carefully broke them apart and bagged them up.






DD3 has pinched a few to have with yogurt to take with her to work. Raspberries are my favourite soft fruit, followed by blackberries of which I still have lbs and lbs in the freezer from the bumper crop we picked for free this past summer. I generally pay about £1.49 in Aldi for just 300g of frozen raspberries so as you can imagine I am over the moon with my bargain.

Right, that's an update for yesterday. I'm now off to my slimming club and keeping everything I have crossed that I'll hit my 4st off target today. I have been soooooo good this week and if I can lose weight over Christmas surely I deserve 2lb off.

10 comments:

  1. I think you are extremely clever to be able to knit gloves. Those raspberries are so cheap I would love it. They are about $7 for 125 g where I live. It sounds like a great day.

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    1. We can pay around that for fresh raspberries over here as well which is why I rarely buy them. Thanks for the compliment over the gloves. I only knit with 2 straight needles and have never figured out knitting in the round on double pins so each finger had to seamed after knitting. Once I'd refreshed my memory over the technique with the first one the second one was quick to make.

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    2. Okay. I may just try gloves one day. I love knitting in the round and quite like knitting socks.

      Aldi had raspberries on sale today $3.50 for 125g. I bought some. I had too.

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  3. You are indeed a multi talented woman, my mum used to knit on double pointed pins and would whip out a pair of gloves or socks without looking at a pattern. The times that I tried all I made was a poor spiders web.

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    1. I'd love to master knitting on doube pins so I could make socks, but somehow I'm just too uncoordinated to manage all those needles.

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  4. Wow! What a fab bargain!! Our morrisons had lots of fresh stuff going for 9p the other day but i was shopping for a client and had to walk sadly by!
    Love the gloves, i made a pair for FH a while back and they came out different sizes lol, i was concentrating on the technique so much that i lost track of tension! I do them on two needles too. And bless the lovely man he refused go let me rip back and start over and wears them proudly :-)
    Love the blog :-)
    Kay xx

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    1. Its awful, isn't it, when you see a real bargain but have to pass it by? That's true dedication, wearing something even with faults because it was made for you.

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  5. Well done on those bargains! And those gloves look fantastic!
    Well done also with your weight loss. I`ve re-started mine and lost 2lb since last week. I just hope I can keep it going as I`d like to reach the 10 stone mark by the
    time I go on holiday to Morocco again.

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  6. Hi, Thank you for your comment on my blog. If you look later on (tea time-ish) I'll put the pattern number and name at the top of my post. Good to know a fellow knitter x

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