Bag Lady

Hello, my Name is Sharon and I am a bagaholic , hangs head, and grins. 

 I love bags big time!  I love making them.  I am always searching the op shops for handles, as I believe that the handles make or break the bag.  This week I manage to snag 3 wooden handles from the hospice op shop in town for $2.  Two, I could use straight away to finish bags that have been waiting a while for their handles.  I was so excited to have finally matched up the bags and handles so got to and finished them last night.

The one above is a just a crochet rectangle with lace frill and crochet flowers.  I just needed to extend the top and fold over and slip stitch together. And I was done in 45 minutes.

This bag is one of my favourite methods.  I buy the out of date curtain and furnishing samples in bundles of 20 or so for a mere $2. 

Then I use lace and old doilies to decorate.  (I can’t bear to use the doilies I make!)  For this one I had crochet a flower in the matching red and cotton, and added a pearl 

button on both sides. Actually, I didn’t finish this till this afternoon!  So, two more bags to give as gifts, or for the church fair, or keep for myself.  In the first picture of this bag you will see that I have a cup of tea, well that is one of the cups from my haul yesterday.  

While I was at the counter buying my handles, someone delivered a box of bits and pieces, the ladies had a quick look through and sighed, one of them said, “more china!”  My ears pricked up for my obsession with china runs a close second with bags. 

“Can I have a look?” I asked hopefully, as I glimpsed some choice pieces.  
"Okay," well, I was in heaven the box had some of my favourite china some crochet cottons and pretty embroidered runners and small table cloths plus some very old magazines from the 1950’s.

I was drooling.  “When will this go out”, I asked

“If you take the whole box you can take it away with you”, said one of the ladies, whom happens to be the manager.

 “Really, there are some good pieces in there!.” I said reluctantly. 

“No, you can have the box for $20 as you are a very good customer!” 

“Are you sure?  There are a couple of cup and saucer sets that you usually sell for $15 to $20!”

“We have so much china at the moment it is a joke and those crochet cottons nobody uses anymore.”

“I do

“Well if any more come in we put them aside for you” the lady offered.  

And would you believe it she phoned me this lunchtime and said that there was a large bag of crochet cottons delivered this morning.

Despite the Royal Albert china and early (1900’s) Meakin china, my favourite piece was this cup, it is Japanese and has a wonderful mother of pearl finish, no saucer, I don’t know whether there is meant to be one.  All in all there were 4 Royal Albert sets, 5 Meakin plates, the Japanese cup and some rather nice plates and bowls.  I feel very blessed.  Needless to say I emptied all my change out into their donation box, the least I could do! The magazines are a real trip down memory lane and I will blog about them at a later stage.

Food budget.

I only needed two items for the coming week – pate and some yogurt that was on sale cheaper than I could make it, plus some milk that I will get later this week to see me through the fortnight.  So I was able to buy some items for my store.  They were all specials and came to $27.25 and that leaves $2.85, milk is $1.99.  First fortnight worked yay!

I am sticking to the menu plan okay, except I am tending to have my main meal at night as it is too hot to eat at midday.

My heat pump was installed this afternoon and I have had it on cool, bliss! That is one reason why my post is late as I couldn’t concentrate on writing it with the workmen drilling and banging!!   And on this note, I will end this post as I need to have a lie down!

So thanks for visiting and have a great day/night wherever you are!

Sharon