my new knitting basket!I got this lovely basket from New Look for half price (£7.5o). It's lined with pretty blue and white striped fabric which matches the tie and has an integral pocket for my notions.
It feels too heavy to use as a handbag (purse) or shopper but I like it because of its weight, it won't get knocked over in the living room by the pooch's wagging tail and spill my yarn on the floor.
I have been using bags designed by Cath Kidston ( from Tesco's) to hold my stuff and that was great on holiday as I needed something soft & flexible that would fit into small gaps in the luggage in the car ( if I had The Luggage from Discworld I would not have this problem and I would have clean laundry automatically every day. If only.)
So the soft bags are now storing yarn in the guest room and this is to keep by my chair in the living room. Thankfully my pooch is not interested in the basket and I don't have a cat who might use as it as a bed and/or scratching post.
I bought the basket on Saturday while shopping with J2 and her pal CR. I stayed with them for a while and then let them have an hour unsupervised shopping while I had a coffee. Its important to gradually increase the amount of freedom that children have. She would like to go shopping on her own and I need to increase her social and economic skills at a sensible pace that suits us both.
I've decided to give her simple lessons in economics: she will get £20 per month for her clothes (except for school stuff and basics like underwear) and the rests she can choose herself. She can carry forward any savings that she makes from month to month and top it up from her pocket money. On Sat, she got a pair of jeans and a top then added extra to get herself a little bag.
She also wants some ankle boots from New Look but they cost £25, so she has said she will save the money till November and get them then. Good. That's exactly what I want her to learn. At the moment I'm not handing over the clothes cash to her unless I'm shopping with her but as she matures I'll encourage her to set up a bank account and arrange a DD for her money like I do with J1.
I want her to start understanding that there is an unlimited supply of money and to make sensible choices, for example if she wants party stuff for Christmas then she needs to save up the money or make do with what she has. She's already quite good at putting outfits together (she has organised her clothes by colour in her wardrobe!) and she has a good sense about her own style , she tends not to follow the crowd (hurray!) and she's quite modest about exposing her body (hurray, hurray!).
I want both kids to learn sound financial sense, which sadly the economy is only just thinking about. The credit crunch has forced another 2 banks to merge ( Lloyds TSB and HBoS), the Northern Rock is still in public ownership, the US Federal reserve has had to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the two biggest mortgage lenders, the Lehman Bros bank has gone bankrupt, and AIG is looking a bit wobbly.
This all sounds dreadful, until you read that some lenders were offering people mortgages at 125% of the value of the property, and it seems that banks/lenders do not have a clue about managing money. Lending someone more than the value of the asset is crazy (after all if they default on the loan then the bank keeps the asset, but it is worth less than the loan. So the bank has set itself up to lose!)
We all need to follow the sound financial principles set down by Mr Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield ( even if he couldn't follow it himself)
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
