Oven Gloves

 Filling regular blog posts means sometimes they are very boring! and this one comes with a warning as this is the first of three posts about car-boot sale finds.........sorry.

I found a pair of brand new heavy duty oven gloves at the Sunday boot sale for £2. They looked just like the ones I like to use that come from the Lakeland company but the packaging wasn't  the usual  Lakeland labelling, although that little tag looked vaguely familiar.

I couldn't remember if I had a spare  in the cupboard already - they are something I've found at boot sales before, but at £2 I knew they were a good money saver. When I got home I put my glasses on and found a tiny note on the back saying they were made for Lakeland.

They'll last ages because they are good quality and are now £9.99 new. 

On the Lakeland website there are all sorts of oven gloves, some like mittens, one for each hand, some shaped like a glove puppet with an opening 'mouth', some made of silicon, and some coloured to match your kitchen. They range in price from £7.99 to £14.99. Or on Amazon there are over 1,000 different sorts listed! 

What sort of oven gloves do you prefer, or do you just grab a handy tea-towel? 

October Days

 Here are the October events from my little Almanac book and the way the months rush by it'll soon be Halloween, and of course the shops have been full of Halloween things for weeks already. 

Looking back at previous October 1st posts and I've already written about so many weather sayings. There were several HERE in the October 1st post from 2024.

So instead I looked in the Illustrated Country Year book by Celia Lewis and found these lovely Thrush illustrations in the October section.

And in the Miranda Mills Country Commonplace Book I found a poem by Robert Bridges

North Wind in October

In the golden glade the chestnuts are fallen all;

From the seared boughs of the oak the acorns fall:

The beech scatters her ruddy fire;

The lime hath stripped to the cold,

And standeth naked above her yellow attire:

The larch thinneth her spire

To lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.

Out of the golden-green and white

Of the brake the fir-trees stand upright

In the forest of flame, and wave aloft

To the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft

But swiftly in shuddering gloom the splendours fail,

As the harrying North-wind beareth

A cloud of skirmishing hail

The grieved woodland to smite:

In a hurricane through the trees he teareth,

Raking the bough and the leaves rending,

And whistleth to the descending

Blows of his icy flail.

Gold and snow he mixeth in spite,

And whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight

He passeth, and all again for awhile is bright.

Robert Bridges (1844 -1930)

(Photo from internet thanks to Biały Ług, Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland)

September Financials Ins and Outs and Penny Savers

 Just the usual income of State Pension and Suffolk County Council Spouses pension and some interest from savings (and if the Labour party abandon the triple lock for pension increases, they'll be losing an awful lot of votes - I don't think they'll dare do it)

Above all the usual expenses there were just two known extras in September.................. DiL's Birthday and Amazon Prime. The unknown extras were for the repair place for sorting the car tyres, some camping gas cylinders and a wind-up/re-chargeable lantern..........just-in-case.

The usual regular monthly outgoings were  for Council Tax, charity, phones and broadband, monthly electric bill and diesel that came to £390. I topped up with diesel twice, didn't really need to but I found the Co-op garage in Stowupland was several pence cheaper than my local one. Everywhere is now creeping to £2 a litre. I wonder whose fault this is??!

Personal spending was low, only exercise group and a haircut, the Elvis dcuk and chocolate rabbits.

Other spending were mostly small things, except for getting the gutters cleaned....... there hasn't been a good rain since to see what  difference it's made. Food spending already mentioned. Organised YGDs birthday pressie ready for October. Then I got sunflower hearts and suet blocks for the birds and stocked up with paracetamol and ibuprofen for bad weather. Small spends for kitchen bits and washing soda crystals. The window cleaner came - thankfully, as the gutter clearing had made a mess of some windows and then someone told me I had a brake light out so it was back to the repair place where Ashley soon got a new bulb in for just £5. Also found a few useful things from car-boot sales which will be blog posts later.

image from google freepik

A few penny-savers

• Beetroot from BiL's garden
• Eating apples from my small trees
• Last of the tomatoes from greenhouse
• Peppers from greenhouse into freezer
• Gift of pears from friend
• Last of the courgettes from garden
• Bread loaves from bread machine
• Only doing one or two lots of washing each week
• Only use dishwasher every other day
• Lots of days not going out so not spending
• Free postage at Lakeland so I sent for a pack of their good quality freezer bags.
• Reading library books for free - no books bought.
• Make sure to always get the in town parking fee refunded by spending £5 in Asda
• Made up a tin of pre-prepared oranges to make 6 jars of marmalade.

Looking at October and there are more birthdays that need presents ....... YGS and Son as well as cards to nephew and great nephew.