Too many bottles....

We have just started another project, clearing out the brake van (another name for the guard's van on a train) which is not far from the house. At the moment it houses the generator and basically a lot of old junk.

The brake van before we did up the hothouse (wonky frame on right hand side).

The end of the brake van that we have started clearing.

One end of the brake van was filled with Vacola bottles of all shapes and sizes. For those of you who have been following my blog for a while you may remember a previous post about these bottles. One has to ask the question, how many preserving jars does one person need?

I have estimated that there are over 400 Vacola bottles of all different sizes in this van. Many of them still have preserves in them some of them dating back to 1990. Beetroot is not good after 25 years! We had cubed beetroot, shredded beetroot, liquified beetroot, powdered beetroot and everything in between. There are peaches, pears, cherries, pineapple, plum sauce, bolognaise sauce, more beetroot, etc, etc. Such a waste of energy for all this produce to have been grown, picked, peeled, sliced, bottled, cooked and kept for it all to be thrown away.

Anyway, we have cleared out the shelves on one wall and the shelves in the middle, taken the sliding door off the outside wall and wow what a difference it makes. The door will eventually go back on, but we have also exposed the window in the door, which was covered up with masonite, and it will still be much lighter inside. The door is extremely solid and heavy and difficult to move.

With the outside door off and the centre shelves still in place.

With the centre shelves removed and the floor cleaned.

The remaining bottles are mostly empty and upside down so they are not as dirty as the others. There are a few that need emptying but not too many.

We have thought of a few different options for using this space already, one of them being a place for me to set up my leadlighting bench.

These are just some of the bottles I have washed. Oh dear, I miss my dishwasher!!

Some of the bottles are sooo tiny I have no idea what they are for. However, I have found a new use for some of them and they look great!

They are the perfect size for tea light candles.

Mike has been busy cutting up all the trees that were cut down a couple of weeks ago. This is some of our stash, tucked away underneath the bench in the hothouse, drying out for future use. There are piles of wood everywhere, much of which needs splitting. We will need to hire a log splitter for this. It's a big job for another day.

I had a great day at sewing with Chris Jurd last Saturday. We started her scrappy sampler quilt and made our first foray into 'made fabric' which consists of sewing lots of random scraps together and then using this just as you would use normal fabric to cut out the desired shape. It was great fun and the day just flew by.

Mine is the one on the left and Sue's on the right. Chris put them up like this to show how you could use them to make a zig zag pattern. I have five more of these to make to complete the strip.

Looking forward to doing some 'homework' for my scrappy sampler this month so we can move on to the next strip pattern at the end of July.