Friday "Frugal and Free" File

1. Finished! And fabulous! (Did I mention the other F word - frugal?)
Here's what I made out of about half the eyelash yarn Pink Rocket sent me in my swap. A cushion for the new Land of Spare Oom armchair: Total cost in this photo:
Chair: $15
Stain: (already had)
Fabric to cover chair: $4.20
Staple gun: borrowed off J & M
Cushion cover: front yarn, free. Back yarn $1.00 at Op shop
Buttons: $1.80
Cushion inner: $4.00 (I looked at getting one from an op shop but they were pretty disgusting)
Total spent: $26 (and if you're in The USA that's $US18.29) Wee hee! And here's the back. Pity that the two balls of wool that were sold together weren't actually the same. But it's the back of the cushion - who's going to notice?

2. In other frugalling news, my lip conditioner ran out this week. I thought about holding off getting a new one till I headed off but then thought even more frugally than buying duty free and decided to see if I could find something just as good for rather a lot less. And I found this which included a free tube of lip balm. At a saving of around, oh, let's not even go there. And if I discover in the next 6 weeks it's utter crap then I can just buy some more of the Mac stuff.

3. I blew out this year's clothing budget by buying this on Wednesday for a whopping $3. My total spend on clothes since January now stands at $5.50.

4. I got good mail (I'm not mentioning Kristin's package cause it got a rave all to itself)
Thursday's mail bought the latest Inside Out with free notebook (not my taste so if you want it leave a comment and it's yours) and (finally) the cheque for my free chocolate.

I'm rich! I'm rich! Oh OK, I can buy maybe four cups of coffee or two bottles of wine...

5. Free but WTF?! These came free with my bag of baby spinach but I'm still trying to work out why exactly you'd want to buy them. Aren't apples designed to be beautifully portable already? And if all else fails you can just knit an apple cover like this...

6. Frugal (for me) and free (for you). I'd planned yet another trip to Lincraft at lunchtime yesterday to buy all the stuff I need to finish projects in April (whose dumb idea was it for me to join Use what you have month anyway?) But somehow I ended up at Cash em in CDs instead and bought 5 CDs for $10. Total.

These three I already own and like a lot so I thought I could buy them and give them away.

So- first person to bags each title in comments gets it sent to them. Easy as that! Please don't bags all three. (Straight away anyway!)

First up is Erasure, Pop 20. (I love the Amazon quote: "the hits on Pop make the duo of Andy Bell and Vince Clarke of Erasure sound like the Rodgers & Hammerstein of synth-pop disco") This is a wonderful intro to the band if you've not heard them before.

Second is Llorca, New Comer an excellent down tempo jazz CD. If you liked St Germain then this is well worth checking out.

Third is Sola Rosa, Solarized which is one of my favorite New Zealand CDs of recent years.

(In case you're wondering I got Black, Wonderful life and China Crisis, Working with fire and steel (Possible pop songs volume 2) both of which I have on vinyl but not CD. Buying the Black brings my versions of the track Wonderful Life up to three)

7. Frugal freaking. With only 9 hours left to buy craft supplies (but who's counting?) to tide me through the next month I did a final visit to Lincraft at lunchtime today and picked up the following:Rather restrained, really. Two metres of black fabric - one metre plain cotton to use with the various black and white bits I have to make... errr... something. One metre of black cotton drill in case I get the hankering to make a bag. One of those cool $2.99 mixed bags of buttons (cause you always need buttons). And a PJ pattern to use with this fabric which I've had since the beginning of the year: And look, four of my favorite things in one fabric (black & white, polka dots, daisies and paisley).

8. Free. I figured it was about time for another cute cat picture:Or, if you prefer, a nice action shot:9. Very very naughty (*blushes and shuffles feet*).

This is supposed to be tofu, parmesan cheese, cucumber, carrots and chickpeas:As you can see it is not tofu, parmesan cheese, cucumber, carrots and chickpeas. But it is beautiful and it is worth the sacrifice of eating rather more tuna and rice than I had planned in the next week to own such a lovely cake rack which I will have forever (as opposed to tofu, parmesan cheese, cucumber, carrots and chickpeas). Right?

(So do you think the "baking tray as magnetic memo board" idea might work? As long as I don't get the urge to make ginger crunch anytime soon... )(Soundtrack: Nice n'Urlich, Everything I do)