2022 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

MrsCD said:

@Baileys_Babe how wonderful that your mum has spent all that time making your cardigan! In my mind, time is worth far more than the cost of the yarn. 
I'm sure it will be a treasured item for many many years. 😊

Even for my size I can buy good-quality yarn to make a cardigan for about 60 quid. 
The time, though, is going to be far more. Minimum Wage for an adult is currently £9.50, so that would cover just over six hours of basic unskilled work. 
Time to knit a cardigan? Oooh, call it 60 hours, and that's cutting it very fine imo, for my large size. 
So that's either a quid per hour to equal the wool-cost, or else the time is going to cost about £360, and that's only charging the basic minimum... 

See why "knitworthy" is a term known to knitters!! 

You don't know how much knitters undervaluing their time makes me see red.  "Ooohhh.... I couldn't possibly charge that much", they'll say, whenever the subject is raised in a Forum.  It's a hand made item!  We wouldn't undervalue it if it was made by a carpenter.

- Pip

TwibbleDee

No purchases, but a report back on my sleeveless Wool& dresses that I seem to be obsessed with here lately.  I've now worn the 3 on rotation for maybe 3 weeks straight, generally with bike shorts (and of course, a bra and panties) underneath.  Much cooler than wearing capri pants for work!  We've been moving offices and completely rearranging things at church (where I work), and they've held up fabulously.  Yesterday, the high was only 77F (25C) - it felt heavenly!  It was supposed to be 68F (20C), so I wore leggings and a shawl with it.  

Right now, I have a dusty blue, forest green, and canyon red dress - there are rumors of purple later this summer, so I'd best be saving up.

I need to go through and just get rid of 3/4 of the clothes I have hanging in the closet - I wasn't wearing them before, and I'm not going to suddenly start.

Cherryfudge

florianatwobob said:

@Baileys_Babe I must admit to a tiny bit of envy re your cardi. My mum crocheted me, when I was 7 or 8, the most wonderfully warm, snuggly cardi out of end of line balls of wool (she worked in a wool shop for a while). I was less than impressed when I outgrew it and it was passed on to my younger cousins. Not that I’m still slightly grumpy about this 35/36 years later…….😉 

How many people just sighed and said 'dream job'? Including me, of course.

Cherryfudge

@TwibbleDee, your dresses sound marvellous. You should be on commission! They highlight the value of good staples and a few accessories but it's an eye-opener how well they help you cope with heat when wool has such an image as a cold weather fabric. Perhaps that's because the English wool trade of hundreds of years ago must have had plenty of practice catering for our climate!

TwibbleDee

Cherryfudge said:

@TwibbleDee, your dresses sound marvellous. You should be on commission! They highlight the value of good staples and a few accessories but it's an eye-opener how well they help you cope with heat when wool has such an image as a cold weather fabric. Perhaps that's because the English wool trade of hundreds of years ago must have had plenty of practice catering for our climate!

I was definitely pleasantly surprised by how well they help me deal with the heat.  We were out at camp and I spilled something on my dress - put on my jean shorts and t-shirt and about melted before I decided to just rinse the dress out and put it back on before it was all the way dry.  I do need to find shorts I like better for underneath, but the dresses are definitely a good buy for me, especially since I can wear them year-round where we are and just add leggings or a wrap in the winter.

Laura_Elsewhere

Yes, there's this strong idea that "cotton is best to stay cool in hot weather" - and it certainly is, when it's worn how they wear it in very hot countries, ie very loose garments and very thin fabrics... 

...but woven as t-shirt material, or denim, all the modern fabrics we're used to, cotton is a really good insulator and keeps heat in, as well as getting clammy very rapidly - not so it feels damp against you but enough to swell the fibres and stop air passing through (which is why cotton fabric masks need to be changed about once an hour). 

If you add even a small amount of synthetic fibres (that 5% lycra that's in everything now) then you boost the insulating properties yet further. 

So a t-shirt and jeans-shorts are excellent wear in hot weather if you need to keep your body very very warm indeed. The very elderly, the very thin, the very disabled, all who feel the cold - all would benefit from wearing t-shirts and denim in hot weather...

For the rest of us, try un-blended thermoregulating fibres, fibres which adjust their behaviour according to temperature - everyone knows that silk is warm in cold weather but cool in hot weather but for some obscure reason our society has forgotten that linen and wool do exactly the same so long as they are 100% linen or 100% wool, and are appropriate weave. 

I worked this out when I did re-enactment. the more authentic someone's outfit was, the less likely they were to come down with heat problems.... but even with a oure-wool soldier's-coat they would still struggle if the lining was cotton.... those who had a pure-linen lining in their pure-wool coats were fine even in blazing hot midsummer... maybe uncomfortable if in direct unshaded sun at midday, but not getting ill... whereas the worst of the inauthentic kit had people keeling over and needing medical care!

PipneyJane

Well said, @Laura_Elsewhere.  Linen is the most elusive fabric, these days, which is a pity because it's a natural fibre that is grown in this country. I haven't seen a bolt of it for years, let alone garments made in it. (Not that I've looked recently.)

The Australian Wool Corporation had a marketing campaign, years ago:  Celsius 30. It was aimed, mainly, at the booted-and-suited gentleman office worker. Items with that label were pure wool and guaranteed to be comfortable in 30+ degrees Celsius.

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane, the historical re-enactment suppliers are an excellent source of pure-linen and pure-wool and thanks to the lurid colour preferences of our ancestors it';s available in quite a range of shades, not solely sludge-green and mud-brown!

I'm just trying to decide between HB3 and HB4 in these stunning, very lightweight herring-bone-twill wools from Lindy Pickard at The Cloth Hall - it's British wool, processed, dyed, woven in Britain... and £15 a metre at 60" wide! 

I *think* I'm going for HB4, the more bright-red one... these are the free samples she sent, and oh, they are all lovely... I initially thought HB3, the more maroon one, would be "better" as it would go with more things and then I thought, hang about, I have lots of lovely autumn/winter things that go with red...
I think I was getting influenced by that thing many of us have of "well, best mot get anything too vivid, otherwise we might stand out in a crowd, shock horror..."  

So I think it will be HB4 for the skirt, and possibly a yard of HB3 for a new everyday shopping-backpack! 

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

@PipneyJane, the historical re-enactment suppliers are an excellent source of pure-linen and pure-wool and thanks to the lurid colour preferences of our ancestors it's available in quite a range of shades, not solely sludge-green and mud-brown!

I'm just trying to decide between HB3 and HB4 in these stunning, very lightweight herring-bone-twill wools from Lindy Pickard at The Cloth Hall - it's British wool, processed, dyed, woven in Britain... and £15 a metre at 60" wide! 

I *think* I'm going for HB4, the more bright-red one... these are the free samples she sent, and oh, they are all lovely... I initially thought HB3, the more maroon one, would be "better" as it would go with more things and then I thought, hang about, I have lots of lovely autumn/winter things that go with red...
I think I was getting influenced by that thing many of us have of "well, best mot get anything too vivid, otherwise we might stand out in a crowd, shock horror..."  

So I think it will be HB4 for the skirt, and possibly a yard of HB3 for a new everyday shopping-backpack! 

That really is excellent value @Laura_Elsewhere.  Would you be able to post a link to Lindy's website, please? (Google comes up with The Cloth Hall in Krakow instead.)  I'm drawn to HB3, if it helps.

- Pip 

Laura_Elsewhere

PipneyJane said:

That really is excellent value @Laura_Elsewhere.  Would you be able to post a link to Lindy's website, please? (Google comes up with The Cloth Hall in Krakow instead.)  I'm drawn to HB3, if it helps.

- Pip 

She doesn't have a website as such - this is her FB page with lots of photos, and an email address, and she replies well to messages ime - she goes to a lot of the re-enactment markets around the country as well, if you prefer browsing in person, but she happily sends samples.

I'm also very tempted by the slightly over-fulled scarlet heavy-wool, as used in uniform "redcoats" - it would make a glorious fitted waistcoat for cold weather, to wear indoors or out, you know the old-fashioned Regency sort with a high standing-band collar? Mmmm.... 

clothhall@talktalk.net

https://www.facebook.com/reenactmenttextiles