A little bit of bargain hunting.

After recently reading a few thrifting, vintage treasure hunting blogs I was envious of the finds others had made and felt the urge to go bargain hunting. This morning I persuaded A & N to accompany me. We zoomed round the shops as we were also squeezing avisit to the local museum in our itinerary.

Things weren't looking too great; five shops down and all we'd spotted was this little handpainted plate (49p) and a dress for A's dolly.

Off to the museum. Nothing terribly interesting to report there...

...though A dashed off this picture at a little drawing table thoughtfully provided by the museum staff while N practised speed crawling and I chased him round some of the exhibits

On the way back to the car we visited one last shop and finally made a few purchases...

A few more embroidered cloths at 49p each. This applique one was my favourite. Beautiful work.

A new handknitted cardigan for A (£1.49). Obviously the handknitted look is not to all peoples' tastes but I like it and fortunately, so does A. She's only 4, no doubt things will change but I'll make the most of it for now. My own knitting skills are not yet up to cardigan level so it was a lucky find.

Some tapestry wool at 5p a skein

A couple of books for A, one featuring a cyclist!

So not too bad in the end. What I'd really love to find is a crochet blanket made of little granny squares joined together. They're proving rather elusive up here.

I do have a little one already which was given to N as a first Christmas present.


Probably not my first colour choice, but it is lovely and had obviously never been used. I'll just need to master this crochet business myself though I'm still having bother with making granny squares.

Guess what! The sun came out this afternoon, what a difference a little bit of sunshine makes.

We then made strawberry milkshake. I followed a recipe which amounted to...

4oz strawberries,

2 little strawberry yoghurts.

Whizz together, add 1 pint milk and whizz again.

The result was extremely dull, tasteless, insipid and not even particularly pink! Lola wouldn't have been impressed and neither were we.

I quickly added about another 4 oz strawberries and some sugar (the strawberries weren't the sweetest).

Much better, though I can think of better uses for fresh strawberries - like just eating them!