02 October 2026

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? 



01 October 2026

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)