Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The November Storecupboard Challenge.

A few of you (probably very few) might be wondering what happened with The Storecupboard Challenge I signed up for at the start of November? Did I do well? Did I manage to do any of it?

Well, yes and no. Yes, I used up a considerable number of the more long-time residents of the pantry and freezer. It's surprising what inventive recipes you can come up with. But are the pantry and the freezer now nice and empty? Well, no. They are still pretty full because November is the month of the Stock Up Now For The Christmas Season special offers in the shops. Some of the offers are too good to miss. So now I have the small freezer (I have two, a small chest one and a very useful "tabletop" extra one) filled up with all the Christmas food that can freeze and the other about 2/3rds full of day to day things.

And my main home shopping delivery has just arrived, with all the bulk basics of booze, cat food, loo rolls and such. Stuff that I don't want to shop for over the next three weeks. And it's vanished into the cupboards with no effort whatsoever, which is amazing.

(Actually, the pantry seems to be full of cat food now, rather than groceries. You really don't want to hear the very long and convoluted tale of how Tesco gave me four weeks x two cats supply of cat food, but belive me I enjoyed this.)

So overall I've used up a lot and as the idea was partially to free up space for Christmas catering, I've succeeded there. It was an interesting exercise and saved me a lot of housekeeping money over November...which I have of course now spent on booze and such. I think I'll do this again in January to help with the twin financial attacks of the sales and the post-Christmas credit card bills.

Knitting? Oh, okay....back of the Cold Weather Corset. (Without lace-up bit.)



The colours of the Noro Iro are, as is usual with Noro, a constant surprise while you're knitting it. I'm not totally 100% enamoured with that very electric blue, but am going with it on the principle that the Noro colour master is probably better at this sort of colour choice than I am.




This is one of a pair of lovely stitch markers I recieved as a gift from a lovely Canadian
Ravelry member called Knittergrl. (No blog, which is a shame. I like reading blogs of people I know in one way or another.) She traded me some Socks That Rock in Scottish Highlands and in the parcel came these stitch markers which went so beautifully with my Iro that I put them on straight away. Thanks, Knittergrl! I hope you enjoy your parcel too, if the Royal Mail ever gets it there.

1 comment:

Helen said...

The Noro looks fabulous. I was transfixed with envy yesterday when I saw it on the cone. Re the electric blue, I've taken the same line with the electric green in the Silk Garden number 8 I'm using just now, that someone spent a lot of time putting it together and I should respect that, because God knows my own efforts don't suggest I know what I'm doing with colour. I've recently spent rather a lot of time helping a friend choose a shade of Noro so that I can knit her a sweater, and it has been a rather greater test of friendship than I expected :)