2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Bigjenny

No chocolate cake thank you, my clothes a little snug at the moment.

I knit mainly baby cardigans which I pass on, and sew occasionally.

MrsCD

PipneyJane said:

MrsCD said:

What a shame the shirt had gone. I've been reading and trying to keep up!
I've bought 2 pairs of shorts in the hope we will have some warm weather eventually.  Could someone tell me how many points please? I'm not sure if they are 5 or 7. Men's shorts are 5 but ladies' divided skirts are 7.

That is a damn good question, @MrsCD .  I think we’ll stick to 5 coupons for shorts.  I’ll amend the first post.

- Pip

Thank you @PipneyJane. I'll sort my totals out soon.

PipneyJane

Bigjenny said:

No chocolate cake thank you, my clothes a little snug at the moment.

I knit mainly baby cardigans which I pass on, and sew occasionally.

Do you have a favourite pattern, @Bigjenny?  I usually knit Courtney Filner's Five Hour Baby Sweater.   (The link is direct to the free pattern. Here are the details on Ravelry.)



- Pip

Bigjenny

Thank you for the link to the pattern.

I use this Paul Gregory one.

Laura_Elsewhere

I have a socks-mitts-hat set hat I churn out for new babies as and when! I've been using acrylic, on the grounds that new parents don't have time to faff about with handwashing rare-breed handspun wool, but with trying to cut back on plastics use, I'm going to be investing in something like organic cotton or bamboo or something for the next infant that comes along... no idea what, but something machine-washable, preferably tumble-dryable and ideally kind to he planet that he baby will be inheriting!

Here's the last lot, for a baby born just after lockdown started last year! Sized for a largeish newborn...

diminua

Just dropping in to say I've bought three tops since the last time I posted - two short sleeved blouses and one t shirt, taking me down to 51 coupons.  Annoyingly I've already torn one of the blouse sleeves on a pebble dashed wall - how I managed to make a hole in the fabric without injuring myself I have no idea. I've embroidered a little dragonfly to disguise the tear and am quite pleased with how it turned out, given that I don't sew much and just stitched it freehand (if I was doing it again I'd be more careful to make all the stitches even, but it's on the left sleeve, so I don't think it's going to be noticeable. Certainly not as noticeable as the tear.). 

Re the discussion about eating on the ration. I do actually have an excel spreadsheet for this, although I've been mapping rather than sticking rigidly. The one major change I have made is to switch back to full fat milk but ration it to three pints a week.  I realised I was getting through pints and pints of semi-skimmed, and it doesn't fill me up like full fat does. 

I'm also conscious that a lot of the things I eat probably weren't available - oranges and mangos for smoothies, onions and tomatoes and garlic for pasta dishes. I think a real war time diet would be incredibly bland.

CAFCGirl

@Laura_Elsewhere Thats an adorable set. It reminds me of The Hudson Bay Company in Canada. 

@diminua You are probably right there, lots of root vegetables, and hedgerow berries, and apples and pears. I find it incredible how many things we think of as common food items now 50 or 60 years ago would have been 'exotic' and most definitely not standard grocery buys. 

PipneyJane

@Laura_Elsewhere - when you find a good organic cotton/bamboo fibre, do let us know.  My worry with cotton is that it shrinks on first washing.  I don’t know if knitting-grade cotton is washed first before being balled up and sold.  (Does anyone else remember being told to wash our dressmaking fabric before sewing garments, back in “the old days” because the cotton would shrink?)

diminua said:

Just dropping in to say I've bought three tops since the last time I posted - two short sleeved blouses and one t shirt, taking me down to 51 coupons.  Annoyingly I've already torn one of the blouse sleeves on a pebble dashed wall - how I managed to make a hole in the fabric without injuring myself I have no idea. I've embroidered a little dragonfly to disguise the tear and am quite pleased with how it turned out, given that I don't sew much and just stitched it freehand (if I was doing it again I'd be more careful to make all the stitches even, but it's on the left sleeve, so I don't think it's going to be noticeable. Certainly not as noticeable as the tear.). 

Re the discussion about eating on the ration. I do actually have an excel spreadsheet for this, although I've been mapping rather than sticking rigidly. The one major change I have made is to switch back to full fat milk but ration it to three pints a week.  I realised I was getting through pints and pints of semi-skimmed, and it doesn't fill me up like full fat does. 

I'm also conscious that a lot of the things I eat probably weren't available - oranges and mangos for smoothies, onions and tomatoes and garlic for pasta dishes. I think a real war time diet would be incredibly bland.

@diminua - please tell us more about your ration diet.  

From my reading of wartime literature, there was a big emphasis on growing your own tomatoes and onions because so much produce was imported before the war, resulting in shortages.  (60% of all fresh food was imported, similar to today.).  Onions, potatoes and tomatoes were seen as things that almost everyone could grow quite easily - unlike a usable carrot (mine always ended up twisted) - so people were encouraged to grow them.  

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

Onions were almost a currency at one point during the war - there was a bad harvest year and they became incredibly difficult to get hold of. There are records of "an onion", all one of it, being the top prize at whist drives or raffles, and of people taking urns to sit up overnight guarding the vegetable garden as onions approach harvesting condition. 

Tomatoes, less mentioned. They do get mentioned but I'm not aware of any big push to grow your own - they weren't really used in much cooking, only quartered or sixthed, raw, in salads really, so although some people certainly grew their own they weren't seen as much of an essential. 
Carrots, turnips, beetroot - all of those were encouraged as home-grown 'Dig for Victory' crops, partly because there was a HUGE push to encourage people to grow themselves "a salad every day for the whole year" and a lot of the salads were root vegetables, grated, raw. The pepperiness of grated turnip or cabbage-heart compensated for the absence of onion a bit... 

Laura_Elsewhere

Here's an original Dig for Victory guide: