2020 Fashion on the Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

@skogar that all sounds like it's working out nicely all round! Let me know if you meet any problems with the pattern, won't you? I think I more or less followed the pattern completely when I made mine, quite a few years ago, and don't remember any major problems  

And yes, you are spot-on - once you've got a reliable pattern for the socks' structure, that's when you can start playing with stripes and patterning and stranded-colourwork and so on! And then, well - the world has no limits then!  

skogar

Hi Laura - that's good, having already got all the things means I can get started and no excuse for putting it off. I'll let you know if I have any problems with the pattern - the top bit should be OK it was on the foot part that it went wrong last time. I am very slow nd easily distracted so it may be a while before I get to the tricky bits.

PipneyJane

Good luck @skogar.  Please ask if you need help.

How is everyone this morning?  No signs of the dreaded virus, I hope.  Personally, I feel like i could sleep for England.  No idea why, but I've been really tired since Monday afternoon.  Tired enough that I have moments when I can't focus my eyes.   The only way I can get any work done this morning is by getting up every 20 minutes or so and walking out into the garden and back.  That seems to generate enough adrenaline to keep me awake/focused for another half an hour.  I did drag myself out of bed this morning for a run but I only managed half/two-thirds of a session.  (I'm doing Couch-to-5k and am on week 2.) 

- PIp

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane - when my late and utterly wonderful aunt was first told her cancer was incurable, we had a very logn talk, and I asked whether there was anything she really wanted me to learn from her before she died.

She thought for a while and then said something along the lines of: "I wish you would learn that sometimes you just need to take a day off. Sometimes you just need to stop, and let the world go on turning, and step aside and let yourself just *be*. And not beat yourself up about it. You don't have to be busy the whole time. It's okay to just do nothing."

So every once in a while I let myself do that.

You probably can't take a day off on a whim, but I suggest you look at the weekend and see if you can set aside a day to do literally and absolutely nothing. Organise meals you can just ping, or eat cold, prepared the day before. Do any urgent housework the day before. Find the book you've been meaning to read. Get the extra-special treat you've been denying yourself. Let the running-shoes have a day off as well. 

Most of us, I think, are very bad at properly giving ourselves a real break, and the result is what you describe, imo. 

Give yourself a day off that doesn't include catching up on laundry, cooking and washing up, going for a run, etc. 

Just let yourself *be*

Have a "Babs Day" as I call them after my brilliant and amazing, and sadly now late, aunt Babs. 

She was a nurse as well, btw! 

PipneyJane

@Laura_Elsewhere, your Aunty Babs was a very wise woman.

The only things I have to do today, work-wise, is a 1.30pm call - which is a check-in to see that we're all still alive - and closing the ledgers in CPA this evening.  I am seriously thinking about taking the afternoon off, lying on the recliner in the garden and doing nothing.  

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

She was indeed wise! I think you should do more than think about it - I think you should sit down now and work out what has to be done today, and get it done; otherwise, postpone it. Organise supper before your 1:30 call. And deliberately leave washing-up til tomorrow. You need to make definite decisions on anything that might otherwise nag at you and stop you properly relaxing. Then it's as if you are staying in a very very good hotel - relax all afternoon with a book, or pottering round the garden doing nothing but admiring the lovely colours, or having a double-long bath with a face-pack, or painting your toenails in stripes before going to have your evening meal, served with no effort on your part and nothing to do afterwards but relax.

Then get the call done, sign off, and that is IT until tomorrow... sleep well and sweet dreams!  

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

She was indeed wise! I think you should do more than think about it - I think you should sit down now and work out what has to be done today, and get it done; otherwise, postpone it. Organise supper before your 1:30 call. And deliberately leave washing-up til tomorrow. You need to make definite decisions on anything that might otherwise nag at you and stop you properly relaxing. Then it's as if you are staying in a very very good hotel - relax all afternoon with a book, or pottering round the garden doing nothing but admiring the lovely colours, or having a double-long bath with a face-pack, or painting your toenails in stripes before going to have your evening meal, served with no effort on your part and nothing to do afterwards but relax.

Then get the call done, sign off, and that is IT until tomorrow... sleep well and sweet dreams!  

Good advice.  I am going to take the afternoon off and just be lazy.

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

We've had another go at Organising Me... I know, from past attempts, that if I at least *try* to stick to a housework timetable then I get much more done, it takes less time and I end up with more energy/time to spend either on needlework or gardening, which in turn makes me happier and healthier. 
But I keep letting it all slither out of my grasp until I am overwhelmed, spending all my time trying to catch up with housework (in a small flat with only two adults - no kids, no pets, no job...) and becoming really miserable... 

So: yet again, here we go  

But it's a start - AND it should give me several afternoons each week for sewing, so I hope to end up making my trousseau properly, so whenever it is that we marry, I shall have a wardrobe of really nice clothes that fit me and look and feel nice... 

And very few coupons! Although for a trousseau, I think I may beg coupons from My Intended and my Aged Parents if needs be! Although I STILL haven't done my coupon-count so don't actually know how mcuh I have left... 

[Deleted User]

I don't seem to be able to sleep the whole night through any longer, part is not being as active as I was before covid, there are only so many times I can make myself go up and down the stairs before I think NOOOOOOO! we walk for at least an hour a day and cover usually around 3.5 miles, I don't sit around lolloping I'm pinging about in the kitchen and into the garden to pick and process etc. but I seem to wake up at between 2 and 2.15 every morning for no reason and then I'm awake until 4ish and sometimes for the rest of the night.  I get things going round in my mind like hamsters is a wheel.  I know these times we live in are stressful and I guess that's part of the reason but I feel constantly tired and am beginning to feel a bit demoralised by it all.

Laura I'm not likely to be buying anything for the rest of this year, I have all I need so can I give you my coupons for your trousseau, I'm sure there must be half of them left? I'd be very happy for you to use them for me if that's allowed under the rules? xxx.

Laura_Elsewhere

@boazu - that is incredibly kind of you and I shall bear it in mind for later in the year if I find I'm running short!

I think pretty well everyone I know, including myself, has totally failed to realise that we are not having a break. The advice I gave upthread to Pip, from my aunt quite a few years ago, really really matters just now. 

I keep having what I've been describing as "a day off" - but I've still been dashing about in the flat organising meals, feeling guilty about not doing X, doing Y because otherwise stuff would need thrown out, etc., etc. 

What I need to do - and recommend everyone does! - is to plan ahead for a weekend, so the meals need minimum preparation, and the washing-up is left til Monday or done by another member of the household (you can swap around alternating weekends off!), and behaving like I would if I were actually away. We don't go "on holiday" but we do usually visit family a few times a year, but of course last year with My Intended and his Son being injured so badly, and now this year with MI's illness and the pandemic and so on, it means I haven't had any time away from the housework since March. 
Normally I am deeply content to be a housewife, and I enjoy providing for us both - but increasingly in recent weeks I've found myself looking at MI and saying hopefully, "shall we just have crisps and chocolate this evening?" because I don't have the oomph to make a meal... not ideal for getting someone into peak health before major surgery!!

But I think most of us haven't taken "a day off" when we've said that's what we've done. And so we haven't had a break. 

Maybe we need to adopt another wartime habit - the Holiday At Home, which advocated making a packed lunch in the morning, a proper picnic, and leaving a cold meal ready for the evening, before "setting off" for the garden with whatever you would take for a lovely day out and a picnic - the food, a book, some knitting, whatever... and then being "away" all day in the garden (assuming you can avoid the rain...) before "coming home" at teatime.