Offcuts and EBay

I was right- my littlest girl was so taken by everything she saw at the zoo yesterday, that she described in very minute detail just about everything she saw and did there yesterday! This morning she continued the tale, as there were some bits she’d missed out!! It’s lovely to hear her- she’s a very chatty and cheerful little girl anyway, and usually fills me in on how her day has been without my needing to ask her, but even by her own standards she’s talking a lot about this trip!

Having just about managed to silence her long enough to get her through the school gate this morning, I walk back home and feel strangely alone. Most of the other parents I see on a daily basis were missing from the playground this morning as their children are away on the residential, and for the first time in a couple of weeks I’m actually returning to an empty house as everybody else is out at work and school. In theory this means I should have a good day and be able to get a lot done, but yet again it’s dull and bitterly cold with an icy wind blowing through the tiniest cracks, so it’s going to be difficult to get motivated.

I managed to get the recycling sorted first thing this morning, in time for Mike to take the boxes down the drive, and the washing up has been in soak since before school, so my day is going well so far. I put some music on for company, and accompanied by Take That I begin my day with the usual round of washing, washing up and breakfast. With absolutely no sign of the promise of spring we had the other day, I turn the heating up to thaw my cold hands, and then turn my attention to everything else I have left to occupy my time today.

Three or four years ago, while despairing over the amount of fabric scraps I was throwing away, I discovered that people sell similar things on eBay. I tried collecting all my offcuts for a few weeks until I had a reasonably sized bag full of scraps, and then advertised them for sale. I wasn’t too hopeful, but I advertised them as being for crafters or patchwork, explained in detail how small some of the pieces were, and showed as much detail of them as I could in the photos- however, I couldn’t see the attraction in buying them, or who they’d appeal to. However, I was proved wrong, and received lovely feedback about the variety of fabrics in the bag. Since then I have taken to collecting all my leftover scraps, keeping each bag to around 500g in weight, and when I have three or four bags ready I put them up for sale.

I currently have four and a half of these, so one of the jobs I really want to get done today is to get the complete bags onto eBay. I need to take good photos of them, so I begin by tipping out the contents of one onto the dining table. It takes a while to arrange the ‘heap’- it’s amazing how many fabrics curl round so all you can see is the wrong side when you want the brighter right side on show! Half an hour or so later and I have a good selection of photos showing each pile from different angles, to show as many of the fabrics as possible. Each bag is also now carefully tied and labelled, to correspond with the order the photos are in on the camera.

Loading the photos onto the description template I already have set up on my business eBay account won’t take very long to do, so I think I’ll do that over lunch rather that waste time sitting doing nothing while they upload. I’ve just decided to get on and have an early lunch when the phone rings, and to my pleasant surprise it’s our son from Canada. We don’t hear much from him, keeping in touch mainly through Facebook instead, which is both easier and cheaper! 

He’s currently in the very early stages of applying for permanent residency status over there, his two year working visa having recently expired. He fills me in on his current situation, what should happen next, and how long everything should take. And he also gets our little Grandson to come to the phone and talk to me- which nearly sets me off crying. At two and a half he’s now chatting non-stop and is a lively small child- when we saw him last he was only ten months old and still a young baby. 

The twenty minutes my son has allowed himself to phone for is soon up, and I come away from the phone feeling both happy that I’ve spoken to him, and sad that he’s so far away.

Having turned Take That down to answer the phone, it seems wrong to put the music straight back on again- it doesn’t seem to go with my mixed mood just at the moment, so I get on with making lunch instead. Not that I really feel like doing that either, so delay by sorting some of the rubbish out that always seems to collect on the kitchen worktops. It’s been driving me mad for weeks, but in my efforts to reclaim the house since being ill, it’s one thing that has had to take a back seat.

I don’t get far with it, but I clear enough to make a difference, and give me the motivation to carry on with it another time. Over a much later than planned lunch I finish the job of getting my offcuts bags onto eBay. I hope they sell well as normal, it really does seem like such a waste to throw all the scraps away, and there’s very little else I can do with them. They’re not exactly huge money spinners- I usually only make about £1 on them after all the fees, but at least they’re not going to landfill. At least, they’re not going there from my bin anyway! I finish the afternoon with a bit more cutting out, as I need to get my Easter dress made up and photographed for the website, and St. George’s Day is coming up soon too. Hopefully tomorrow there’ll be a chance for me to actually make them, but for now I’m back off down to the school for the next instalment of yesterday’s zoo adventure!