2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Cherryfudge

Incidentally there is an amazing kitchenware shop underground in the middle of Sydney that's definitely on my 'must return to' list - and a couple of wonderful ones in Haarlem, one of which was endearingly called 'Huis Muis'. It's probably as well I didn't spot any yarn shops back in the day when there were such things as holidays abroad!

PipneyJane

Cherryfudge said:

Incidentally there is an amazing kitchenware shop underground in the middle of Sydney that's definitely on my 'must return to' list - and a couple of wonderful ones in Haarlem, one of which was endearingly called 'Huis Muis'. It's probably as well I didn't spot any yarn shops back in the day when there were such things as holidays abroad!

Oooohhhh... I can recommend a yarn shop in Sydney if you want?  The wonderful Morris & Son at 50 York Street.  They used to be called "Tapestry Craft", when I first discovered them in the 1980's and are still in the same premises.  They still sell needlepoints - their Sydney Harbour series are amazing - but branched out into yarn about 20 years ago.  I think they also sell quilting supplies.  They now have branches in Melbourne (in an arcade off Collins Street), Parramatta, Richmond (Victoria) and Adelaide.

- Pip  (Yes, I'm a fan.  Their address is engraved on my brain, even though I haven't been near there since 2001.)

CAFCGirl

Cherryfudge said:

The biggest source of yarn is Boyes department store on the High Street (upstairs). The Sue Ryder charity shop off the Applegarth has a small amount of second hand yarns, Strikes Garden Centre (just to the north of town) has a craft department with some yarn, and then there's the knitting shop on Friarage Street which I've never dared enter as I fear I'd spend a lot. I think that's the one Pip recommended.

P.S. I don't know if you've been in Boyes yet but their one-way system is confusing - you go in on the right and take the staircase just ahead to get to the upper floor, then come down by the staircase on the opposite side. If you want to get to somewhere in the middle of the ground floor, it's tricky from upstairs but possible now that people aren't as strict.

I've been to Boyes in Darlington which had a weird and wonderful layout, and my plan was to try over there for the yarn make I need. My mum says they stock it in the Darlington one, and my Nan's cleaner said the Northallerton Boyes is nicer than Darlo's LOL
I found the yarn shop. DH keeps offering to stop there for me, but I fear it might be a top tier yarn shop so my cheap and cheerful yarn habits might be misplaced there...

But the YTC looks like it might be a fun Aladdin's cave wandering. I do love a bit of kitchenalia and I'm always on the look out for silicone moulds for the business (for soaps and melts etc). I'm not far from the car park entrance which is less anxiety inducing than the front door funnel neck. It strikes me as the type of place when you wouldn't know who would stock something specifically, they probably would HAHA ... Sue Ryder didn't have any yarn in that I could spot today but I did meet the people who run a hub type place and will be taking my loom knitting along next time to show them (at their request). 
Its so far proving to be a very lovely place to live.

PipneyJane

CAFCGirl said:

Cherryfudge said:

The biggest source of yarn is Boyes department store on the High Street (upstairs). The Sue Ryder charity shop off the Applegarth has a small amount of second hand yarns, Strikes Garden Centre (just to the north of town) has a craft department with some yarn, and then there's the knitting shop on Friarage Street which I've never dared enter as I fear I'd spend a lot. I think that's the one Pip recommended.

P.S. I don't know if you've been in Boyes yet but their one-way system is confusing - you go in on the right and take the staircase just ahead to get to the upper floor, then come down by the staircase on the opposite side. If you want to get to somewhere in the middle of the ground floor, it's tricky from upstairs but possible now that people aren't as strict.

I've been to Boyes in Darlington which had a weird and wonderful layout, and my plan was to try over there for the yarn make I need. My mum says they stock it in the Darlington one, and my Nan's cleaner said the Northallerton Boyes is nicer than Darlo's LOL
I found the yarn shop. DH keeps offering to stop there for me, but I fear it might be a top tier yarn shop so my cheap and cheerful yarn habits might be misplaced there...

But the YTC looks like it might be a fun Aladdin's cave wandering. I do love a bit of kitchenalia and I'm always on the look out for silicone moulds for the business (for soaps and melts etc). I'm not far from the car park entrance which is less anxiety inducing than the front door funnel neck. It strikes me as the type of place when you wouldn't know who would stock something specifically, they probably would HAHA ... Sue Ryder didn't have any yarn in that I could spot today but I did meet the people who run a hub type place and will be taking my loom knitting along next time to show them (at their request). 
Its so far proving to be a very lovely place to live.

I don't recall the yarn shop being massively expensive.  (Admittedly, it's been nearly 5 years.)  It was an Aladdin's cave sort of place, but tidier.  I know they stock West Yorkshire Spinners - I bought several balls of Signature Sock yarn there - and their price was about the same as the WYS website.  They were kind and friendly, not intimidating.

HTH

- Pip

CAFCGirl

I might find the courage to call in then

Liverpool_Anne

@Cherryfudge and CAFCGirl I am thinking I need to pay a visit to Otley, it sounds brilliant.
@TwibbleDee I will think about a spreadsheet but I know from previous attempts I am not good at remembering to enter things onto them and then they become a major job trying to reconcile them to the bank statements. I am also a bit of luddite in that I don't like/trust internet banking though I have progressed to phone banking so not completely in the dark ages. I usually rely on the old trick of rounding up spends to the nearest pound and rounding down income taught to me by my friend's Mum when a student, worked brilliantly when we all had a cheque book but requires more effort now in the digital age, though I do still have a cheque book lurking

PipneyJane

Liverpool_Anne said:

@Cherryfudge and CAFCGirl I am thinking I need to pay a visit to Otley, it sounds brilliant.
@TwibbleDee I will think about a spreadsheet but I know from previous attempts I am not good at remembering to enter things onto them and then they become a major job trying to reconcile them to the bank statements. I am also a bit of luddite in that I don't like/trust internet banking though I have progressed to phone banking so not completely in the dark ages. I usually rely on the old trick of rounding up spends to the nearest pound and rounding down income taught to me by my friend's Mum when a student, worked brilliantly when we all had a cheque book but requires more effort now in the digital age, though I do still have a cheque book lurking

 I used to scribble down my spends in the front of my cheque book and track my money there.  I never tracked my cash spends, just direct debits, standing orders, card payments and the amount of cash withdrawn from the bank.  It was something I copied from a client, when I was doing her books.  (This was a “brown paper bag job”, the lifeblood of small accountancy firms.).   Later, I progressed to keeping this record in my Filofax.

This method worked well, when I had the discipline to do it.  I’d keep it up for a couple of years and then lapse for months, ending up “in trouble”.  That’s why I developed my lazy way of personal bookkeeping.  It keeps me on track without any effort.

As a student nurse, I did track my cash spends.  I had a small notebook that I carried everywhere, where I recorded my “Money To Live Off”.  I had $150 a fortnight. I’d start a page with that and just deduct whatever I’d spent, keeping a running total so that I always knew what I had left.  Life was simpler then, pre-credit cards and pre-internet, but also Australian banking was more sophisticated than in the UK.  For example, if you deposited a cheque, it cleared (or bounced!) immediately.  You could walk outside the bank to the Cashpoint, see it in your balance and withdraw that money if needed.

- Pip

PollyWollyDoodle

Okay, just adding my two penn’orth (pun intended!) I use a budgeting software called YNAB (You Need A Budget). I first heard about it here on the forum, I had a free version for a while but I now pay for it. I think it repays me 10 times over! I enter my expenditure manually, you can link it up to your bank account but I’ve never done that. It really doesn’t take long, I have a mobile app so I can add some transactions as soon as I do them and direct debits and standing orders come up anyway. 

Within the app I have different ‘pots’ and you can set these up exactly as you want. I have a budget for “hobbies” which includes fees for my calligraphy class, sadly I will be leaving that after this term, it covers yarn, fabric, in fact anything to do with making stuff. If you have overdrawn on category it alerts you, and you can decide whether to fund it from somewhere else, eg if I have exceeded the amount in the hobbies category I can take some out of “spending money”. I don’t track every single cash expenditure, although of course there are very few of those these days. 

I’ve always been “good with money” e.g. I never run out at the end of the month and knew what I could afford but I never quite knew where it was going before. Because I am self-employed I also use this to track my business expenditure. It’s worked brilliantly for me, and I actually look forward to reconciling my bank account each Monday! I’m sure a spreadsheet would do the job, but I’d never manage to set it up properly. 

Laura_Elsewhere

Liverpool_Anne said:

 I usually rely on the old trick of rounding up spends to the nearest pound and rounding down income taught to me by my friend's Mum when a student, worked brilliantly when we all had a cheque book but requires more effort now in the digital age, though I do still have a cheque book lurking

That's a brilliant bit of thinking! 

Laura_Elsewhere

My tuppence incoming, too  

I've never had much of an income, and often very unreliable (I've only twice earnt enough in a year to pay income tax, for example...) so I became very good at living right up to my income but not going beyond it, so I was rarely in debt but similarly I rarely had any spare and never any savings to speak of. There was a lovely few years when my income shot up and I lived the life of Riley, but that income stayed the same for the next 12 years, whilst of course everything else went up, so I ended up having less and less actual money in real terms and cut back and back on everything. 
My Intended has had a steady income all his working life, but his last wife (!) was terrible with money (eg when he moved out, despite now paying his old half-mortgage plus his own rent and supporting his offspring, etc., he found himself with eight hundred quid spare at the end of each month!!!!!). He thinks I'm a marvel with money, whereas I know I'm a wild spendthrift - it's just that my idea of being a spendthrift is to blow a tenner on something, rather than three hundred... 

We don't cut corners, really, but our money seems to go further than I expect - we check prices online every so often, and buy some particular things from one supermarket or another, depending on who is cheapest. M.I. really is very good with money. My old Head of Dept was renowned for his near-miraculous ability to produce funding, and the comment was always that he moved money around so rapidly that at times it existed in more than one place at the same time and I sometimes wonder if that's how M.I. does it  

The biggest thing that helps, I think, is that I don't have any kind of allowance or budget for my own personal indulgent spending ie yarn or chocolate or fancy grapes, outings with friends in normal times, etc. Instead, M.I. simply trusts me with all his money (!) and just says, "was it a good idea to buy that thing, at that price, at that time?" and if so then yes, buying it was right.
So I never have that awful "joke" of "having to hide it from my DH" that always feels so horribly un-funny when I see reference to it - some jokes are very common but don't feel funny to me, like the ones about "having to drink" because of the kids - probably because of hearing my sister yelling and snarling viciously that "it's you two ungrateful little bleep-bleeps that make me drink, you bleeping little bleeps" at my little nieces...  similarly, I've known couples who hid things from each other and insisted it wasn't important and then it turned out horribly, awfully important. I think I don't have the same sense of humour as normal people, tbh. 

Anyway, money - our approach is less about budgeting and more about whether a purchase is justifiable. If so, buy it; if not, don't... very Martin Lewis, as it turns out!