This month is all about “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” as during the past few weeks, we have become a little bit obsessed with charity shops - and more specifically scouring charity shops for cook books and clothes.
We love it as not only are we supporting the local charity in question, but in the case of looking for clothes, how we can turn something old into something new, rather than send it to landfill.
Converting clothes is set to be the next big thing in fashion. It’s something that’s being talked about more and more. The BBC’s Sewing Bee (my new favourite thing) featured quite a few tasks of transforming old clothes or even fabric that once upon a time might have been a curtain, a duvet or tablecloth - into something new and amazing.
A friend of mine has just been commissioned to write a regular column in Psychologies Magazine on how to convert clothes that don’t fit into something new and exciting, rather than throw them away.
So inspired by this I purchased an old dress that is far too small but I love the sleeves. So inspired by the Sewing Bee, I'm having a go at changing the dress into a lovely top - I am absolutely rubbish at it, but I absolutely love it! I’ll maybe post the picture on Instagram when it’s ready (maybe!) but I just love the idea and ethos behind this.
As well as clothes, we also love scouring for new cook books - or at least new to us. As you may know, we are rather obsessed with cookery books to the point where we recently learned a new Japanese word called Tsundoku - the art of buying books you know you will never have the time to read!
But we can't resist and rather than buy new ones, we have picked up some tasty treasures from the charity shops in the past few weeks. We’ve now added to our collection a couple of classics from the much-loved and much-missed Gary Rhodes; a retro-style home Italian cooking book dating back to 1973 (with a fab cauliflower salad recipe which we've tried already!); a great Japanese cooking bible that looks almost new but was published nearly twenty years ago; and a rather niche book on Jelly (no, really!) with a really funky cover that we just couldn’t resist.
These were all picked up for a couple of pounds each and I’ve been getting inspiration from their pages, even the jelly book. The pictures and styling may be dated but 20+ year’s later, there’s a lot of recipes that have stood the test of time and that I’m looking forward to cooking.
