2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Liverpool_Anne

@Cherryfudge, yes I love the idea of the increasingly large carrier bags. You must have an amazing charity shop, I have never found yarn of any kind in a charity shop. I did once find some lovely embroidery thread on a stall at a summer fair. I was with my Mum and they had boxes of DMC thread, we spent ages and quite a few pennies on choosing which colours we wanted and I remember when we got home Mum said we should have got more . 

Cherryfudge

Wraithlady said:

Just bought a dress from a friend who was clearing out her wardrobe - second-hand so no coupons, and only £5 for post & packing. Should come in handy when/if we go abroad next year.

That sounds very bargainaceous, as well as being good recycling, and it's good to live in hope. DH has just assured me London will exist again when all this is over, so presumably abroad will, too. Getting the dress is good evidence of it.

I wonder if the UK is peculiar in its tendency to buy clothes specially for holidays (on the precept that 'Climate is Different There' and 'This Will Be Useful For Holiday Activities')? I certainly have quite a few pieces of clothing that I'd never wear in the UK but which were chosen because they pack well and I might need to cover up from the sun or in the cool of the evening while in the UK I'd just put a jumper on...

Cherryfudge

Liverpool_Anne said:

@Cherryfudge, yes I love the idea of the increasingly large carrier bags. You must have an amazing charity shop, I have never found yarn of any kind in a charity shop. I did once find some lovely embroidery thread on a stall at a summer fair. I was with my Mum and they had boxes of DMC thread, we spent ages and quite a few pennies on choosing which colours we wanted and I remember when we got home Mum said we should have got more . 

Oh that would be me! In fact I came away from the charity shop remembering they had some pretty lemon-coloured tapestry wool that I'd liked.

Quite a few charity shops here seem to do yarn, and lots have knitting needles. Some even do fabric offcuts! @CAFCGirl is going to have fun when she moves as there are far too many charity shops here (depending on your viewpoint). Something to do with business rates I think, but they do make good browsing.

Laura_Elsewhere

Cherryfudge said:

@Laura_Elsewhere, re-reading your post, is yours Lyscord or Lyscordet? It's the latter I have but if you could post a picture of the Lyscord as per the early version of The Bag, it would give me a clearer idea of what was intended.  

Ahhh, it's Lyscordet I have, curses - I misread your original... I shall keep an eye out for the elusive Lyscord-without-any-et!

Cherryfudge

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Ahhh, it's Lyscordet I have, curses - I misread your original... I shall keep an eye out for the elusive Lyscord-without-any-et!

Thank you . The quest continues!

PipneyJane

Cherryfudge said:

Wraithlady said:

Just bought a dress from a friend who was clearing out her wardrobe - second-hand so no coupons, and only £5 for post & packing. Should come in handy when/if we go abroad next year.

That sounds very bargainaceous, as well as being good recycling, and it's good to live in hope. DH has just assured me London will exist again when all this is over, so presumably abroad will, too. Getting the dress is good evidence of it.

I wonder if the UK is peculiar in its tendency to buy clothes specially for holidays (on the precept that 'Climate is Different There' and 'This Will Be Useful For Holiday Activities')? I certainly have quite a few pieces of clothing that I'd never wear in the UK but which were chosen because they pack well and I might need to cover up from the sun or in the cool of the evening while in the UK I'd just put a jumper on...

Quite possibly.   If you look back through old magazines from the 1960’s/70’s, you’ll even see fashion spreads promoting the idea of “holiday clothing”, both for summer holidays and for skiing.  That was the era when flying to Spain or Portugal for your holiday became “a thing” for ordinary people. Slightly earlier, coach trips started to go skiing in the Alps - I have knitting patterns from the 1950’s for “ski jumpers”.

(When we we look back at an era, we have a tendency to look at it only through the prism of the big economic stories:  the 1970’s were The Oil Crisis and massive inflation; the 1930’s were The Great Depression.  But if you had a job, while you’d have been worried about losing it, life was reasonably prosperous.  The house I’m sitting in now is a good example.  London would not be ringed by suburb after suburb of 1930’s semi-detached housing, if regular people didn’t prosper during that time.)

- Pip

Cherryfudge

1950s 'Ski jumpers' sound very hygge!

I'm in a 1930s house too and I see your point: we remember the big news stories but behind the scenes were ordinary people still living ordinary lives. I remember a history tutor describing the westward sweep of the barbarians but adding that we mustn't forget all the ordinary people living in hamlets all over Europe, for whom generations passed with scarcely a horseman riding by (or words to that effect).

CAFCGirl

@Cherryfudge has me all kinds of excited for these charity shops. My thoughts (perhaps misguided) are that they may have a slightly higher caliber of stock than what I'm used to in the ones locally.

Did you see there's a new farmers market starting this Sunday @Cherryfudge? 

Laura_Elsewhere

Going abroad for a holiday only became A Thing for a few ordinary people in the 60s and early 70s - it was still something to be really talked about, a major event, used for years afterwards as a marker for when other things happened... my Nana and Grandad went to Cortina in the Italian Alps in the late 1960s on a package holiday and not only did they still mention it with capital letters in the 1980s, but their friends did too, "that was the year after Betty and Stan went to the Italian Lakes, you remember, Ciss...". 
Meanwhile, my better-off Gran and Grandaddy went to Switzerland in the late 1940s on holiday, and Grandaddy travelled for work "to the Continent", but they were regarded as very unusual. The general view across he families was that Mum did well, marrying into this family who went off all over the place, Dad having by then worked in he Far East for a year in a refugee mission for the UNHCR, and Mum and Dad going to work in the States for a year when they married in the mid-60s. 

You're right about the Great Depression not affecting everyone - in Britain it was very regional, and I believe I read once that from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, it was something like 95% of ship-building shut down, but house-building went up by 95%! 

I am trying very hard with my Trousseau-making this week. I have been seeing a very useful Counsellor over Zoom since the autumn, and she really is good. She's suggested that - for general everyday life- I write down my decisions AND my reasons for the decision, so I am more likely to stick to it. It hadn't occurred to me that my notorious inability to function when I suddenly come up against a decision that doesn't have an obvious "right choice", known as 'freezing', might be behind why I'm so bad at finishing needlework projects. I design on the hoof, and so I get something 3/4-made and then can't decide whether to put the zip at side or back, so I freeze and can't finish it. Eventually it gets shoved aside and I start on something else... hence now I have so many unfinished things... 
So I have written down exactly what my new green linen skirt will be like, and why each thing is to be like that, and as a result I now only have pockets and hem to do. 

Cherryfudge

CAFCGirl said:

@Cherryfudge has me all kinds of excited for these charity shops. My thoughts (perhaps misguided) are that they may have a slightly higher caliber of stock than what I'm used to in the ones locally.

Did you see there's a new farmers market starting this Sunday @Cherryfudge? 

I don't know how ours will compare, @CAFCGirl, but there are quite a few to choose from!

I hadn't seen about the Farmer's Market, but it used to be worth a visit, as is the Bedale Car Boot, currently planned to restart on Sat. 5th June, and the Homegrown Food Festival (27th June).

Start saving your pennies.

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Going abroad for a holiday only became A Thing for a few ordinary people in the 60s and early 70s - it was still something to be really talked about, a major event, used for years afterwards as a marker for when other things happened... my Nana and Grandad went to Cortina in the Italian Alps in the late 1960s on a package holiday and not only did they still mention it with capital letters in the 1980s, but their friends did too, "that was the year after Betty and Stan went to the Italian Lakes, you remember, Ciss...". 
Meanwhile, my better-off Gran and Grandaddy went to Switzerland in the late 1940s on holiday, and Grandaddy travelled for work "to the Continent", but they were regarded as very unusual. The general view across he families was that Mum did well, marrying into this family who went off all over the place, Dad having by then worked in he Far East for a year in a refugee mission for the UNHCR, and Mum and Dad going to work in the States for a year when they married in the mid-60s. 

You've reminded me of a story of my Dad's, @Laura_Elsewhere. When he got a car he took his mum and her friend on a day trip to North Wales. They were very tickled that they had left the country!