2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

TwibbleDee

My signature has been updated appropriately.  That’s all I’m going to say ‘bout that. 

florianatwobob

Updated my signature now the bras have arrived, fit and are really comfy! 

PipneyJane

@PollyWollyDoodle said:

For @PipneyJane and anyone else who would like to trace someone who died in one of the World Wars, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at www.cwgc.org is a brilliant resource. Be prepared to be disappointed though; I looked up my great uncle who died at Ypres, only to find that there is no grave, instead I was directed to an entry on the Tyne Cot Memorial 😢. He was one of the thousands ‘missing, presumed killed’. Or perhaps he rests in state in Westminster Abbey, who knows. 

Thanks Polly.

I have a suspicion that Mark is listed in the missing Australians on the Menin Gate.  I've not been there, but I once spotted a listing via the TV that could be him.  The problem is that, unlike my dad's uncle at Gallipoli, Mark had a really common surname so that could be someone else with the same name, hence the reason I need to find his service number.  (My mum knew them by heart.  Hopefully, I wrote them down when I did that family history assignment.)

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

Probably the most close-to-home work I did in my days as a practising archaeologist was when I went to Arras in 1999 and worked on the remains of eight British servicemen who had died at the Somme, confirming supposed identification on four and excluding an incorrect supposed identification on a fifth, leaving physical description on file for the remaining three. There are four blank spaces on that Lutyens monument at Thiepval, as they remove the names of those who are found and now have graves. There are still over 70,000 names of those who have no gave, and that is only from the Somme, not from the rest of the Great War. But I played a tiny role in helping to take four names off, at any rate... 

PipneyJane

TwibbleDee said:

My signature has been updated appropriately.  That’s all I’m going to say ‘bout that. 

Yes, @TwibbleDee you will get all your 66 coupons next year.  The slate for over-spenders is wiped clean at midnight on New Year's Eve.  (Those people who managed to not spend all their coupons, get to carry them forward to next year.)

Talking of which.... I have found my next handbag.  Don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I like handbags where the straps will swap it from being an over-the-shoulder bag to being a backpack.  Only place I can find them is France.  Only brand I can find who  make them are Hexegona, who made my current bag (similar to this), but they won't ship to the UK because of Brexit.  Anyway, I've found a UK source for their bags.  The new bag is very similar to one I used from 2014-18, when it died, and I am seriously tempted to buy two.  That would use up all my remaining 2021 coupons.  I haven't placed my order yet.

- Pip  (I still miss that bag and regret binning it.)

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Probably the most close-to-home work I did in my days as a practising archaeologist was when I went to Arras in 1999 and worked on the remains of eight British servicemen who had died at the Somme, confirming supposed identification on four and excluding an incorrect supposed identification on a fifth, leaving physical description on file for the remaining three. There are four blank spaces on that Lutyens monument at Thiepval, as they remove the names of those who are found and now have graves. There are still over 70,000 names of those who have no grave, and that is only from the Somme, not from the rest of the Great War. But I played a tiny role in helping to take four names off, at any rate... 

Bless you for doing so, @Laura_Elsewhere.

I know why there are so many unnamed soldiers from the Great War:  a combination of lack of metal meaning that dog-tags were made out of leather for large parts of the war and also that, in places, when men died, their dog tags were placed on their hastily erected grave marker but those were removed/destroyed when the front line swept back through.  When dog-tags went to leather, many service men paid privately to have metal bracelets engraved with their details and wore those.  The leather dog-tags rotted quite quickly on the Western Front. 

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane, for most of the war, the British identification-labels were made of compressed cardboard, only towards the end being made from aluminium, which decays rapidly in the ground... but it's not even as 'good' as you describe - pretty well all the soldiers who were buried, in any formal way, were later moved to the official war cemeteries with their name, but the Known Unto God soldiers were basically the ones never found, never deliberately buried - when you have hundreds of thousands dead in a single day, inevitably tens of thousands, if not more, are left. I won't go into further details... 

Those born into hope in 1919 and 1920 were just the right age in 1939...

Laura_Elsewhere

More cheerfully...! 

Those wools I dyed to autumn colours in October stubbornly refused to work with each other how I wanted them to. I tried quite a lot of different ideas and eventually hauled out all my sheep-coloured pure-wool and some cheery-red New Lanark pure wool, and now I'm going to knit the cardigan in Fair Isle with a background fading from dark grey through chocolate-brown to pale grey, and the patterning being all those autumnal colours plus pillarbox-red... I've done a test-piece, just making up any old pattern, and it seems to work.

So, no extra coupons and using up some yarn I've had for twenty years! 

florianatwobob

Laura_Elsewhere said:

@PipneyJane, for most of the war, the British identification-labels were made of compressed cardboard, only towards the end being made from aluminium, which decays rapidly in the ground... but it's not even as 'good' as you describe - pretty well all the soldiers who were buried, in any formal way, were later moved to the official war cemeteries with their name, but the Known Unto God soldiers were basically the ones never found, never deliberately buried - when you have hundreds of thousands dead in a single day, inevitably tens of thousands, if not more, are left. I won't go into further details... 

Those born into hope in 1919 and 1920 were just the right age in 1939...

We have my Gt grandad’s WWI ID tag which is cardboard with his name and service number along impressed in it plus his silver war badge (pic attached).  Great Grandad re-enlisted at the start of WWI and kept his original number and rank from the Coldstream Guards. He’d wanted to rejoin his old regiment but was sent to the Border Regiment, partly because of where he lived and, I expect, they wanted some experienced men with so many inexperienced soldiers. 

TwibbleDee

PipneyJane said:

TwibbleDee said:

My signature has been updated appropriately.  That’s all I’m going to say ‘bout that. 

Yes, @TwibbleDee you will get all your 66 coupons next year.  The slate for over-spenders is wiped clean at midnight on New Year's Eve.  (Those people who managed to not spend all their coupons, get to carry them forward to next year.)

Talking of which.... I have found my next handbag.  Don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I like handbags where the straps will swap it from being an over-the-shoulder bag to being a backpack.  Only place I can find them is France.  Only brand I can find who  make them are Hexegona, who made my current bag (similar to this), but they won't ship to the UK because of Brexit.  Anyway, I've found a UK source for their bags.  The new bag is very similar to one I used from 2014-18, when it died, and I am seriously tempted to buy two.  That would use up all my remaining 2021 coupons.  I haven't placed my order yet.

- Pip  (I still miss that bag and regret binning it.)

This is a US brand, so no idea if they’d ship across and not leather, but I love their prints. https://www.thesak.com/products/loyola-convertible-backpack?variant=31609281937466