2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Cherryfudge

It must be a tough time Pip - I hope you are back home soon (where you make the rules). It's good that your MiL is eating better... and that you've discovered some charity shops for a distraction.

I hope your DH's interview has gone /is going to plan. It's tough that he has it while his mother is in hospital. Might there be further interviews to come?

@Laura_Elsewhere, I particularly like the combination of light blue and red, very much to my taste Missus. In fact I think you are all putting me to shame - old jeans and old tee shirt here (light blue with a logo that makes believe I bought it in California on the beach, whereas I suspect it was Primarni in the Arndale centre). In my mind, though, I'm definitely in that red Dior dress. I love the New Look.

thriftwizard

PipneyJane said:

Please tell me more about your garlic processing, @thriftwizard.  We’ve got 9 growing, which I’ll harvest when we get home.

The lacto-ferment is just peeled cloves in brine, @PipneyJane! I've added a fresh chilli as I've also grown rather a lot of those; most are being dried but I left a few for current usage. The braid is exactly that; the roots cut off & any loose leaves pulled away, then the stems braided together in a traditional plait, adding further bulbs in as you go up, then string criss-crossed several times round the braid, tied at the top & a loop added so they can be hung somewhere dry, in our case the conservatory. The two best & biggest bulbs have just been put aside, also in the conservatory, for next year's "seed". But there's a second "bed" awaiting processing now, the spring-planted stuff - we'll be living with the smell for another couple of days!

weenancyinAmerica

@Pipney Jane - hope today has been a better day for MIL. Hugs for everyone.

PipneyJane

weenancyinAmerica said:

@Pipney Jane - hope today has been a better day for MIL. Hugs for everyone.

Thanks @weenancyinAmerica and everyone else for your best wishes.

DH and I went to see MIL this evening.  She’s a lot better than she was when I saw her on Saturday; alert and “with it”.  They’ve discontinued her oxygen.  They’ve given her two units of blood - packed cells - because she’s quite anaemic (HB of 7.4 in the old units, 74 in the new), but they’re still trying to figure out the cause of the anaemia.  It’s not in her sputum, urine or her faeces, which eliminates 3 major sites of bleeding and multiple causes.  She’ll be in hospital for a while yet.

- Pip


PS:  DH’s security interview went well.  It lasted 2 hours but he’s been told by his interviewer that his recommendation is to give him clearance.

CapricornLass

That's a nice photo of you, Pip.

Gem-gem

thriftwizard said:

PipneyJane said:

Please tell me more about your garlic processing, @thriftwizard.  We’ve got 9 growing, which I’ll harvest when we get home.

The lacto-ferment is just peeled cloves in brine, @PipneyJane! I've added a fresh chilli as I've also grown rather a lot of those; most are being dried but I left a few for current usage. The braid is exactly that; the roots cut off & any loose leaves pulled away, then the stems braided together in a traditional plait, adding further bulbs in as you go up, then string criss-crossed several times round the braid, tied at the top & a loop added so they can be hung somewhere dry, in our case the conservatory. The two best & biggest bulbs have just been put aside, also in the conservatory, for next year's "seed". But there's a second "bed" awaiting processing now, the spring-planted stuff - we'll be living with the smell for another couple of days!

Thank you @thriftwizard I have grown / harvested garlic for the first time. I think I may have pulled them up a little early as the bulbs are quite small. I have dried them off for a few week and was wondering what to do with them next. I was thinking of chopping / crushing them down and adding a little oil and freezing it down. And / or make some garlic butter pats and freeze. 

Do you hang them in your conservatory till you need them?
is that right that if I keep a couple back I can use them to grow next years garlic. Where do you store these? Do you do anything different to these until you plant them? When do you plant your first batch? 

@PipneyJane sorry to hear about your MiL. Hope it isn't long before the drs find out why she is anaemic. 

Today, I had a health check up. Weight - 1kg drop but still too high; blood sugar at 30 - very happy with this; told to keep up the good work with the exercise; cholesterol was 5.5 - need to do something about this. Need to cut down on butter / homemade ice-cream / homemade cake / homemade pies. I probably need a wartime ration diet!

No new coupon spends to declare. 

PipneyJane

Good morning All

We finally came home yesterday afternoon. MIL is considerably better, back to her level of “normal”.  They still have to do the OT assessment and to figure out continuing care, but it’s possible she’ll be discharged by Monday.  We’ll pop down and see her next week.

I’m just catching up on the last two episodes of Sewing Bee.  No spoilers, just a question/observation/exasperation:  why don’t people pin their pattern pieces to the fabric they’re cutting out???  

Seriously, it’s something I’ve noticed all the way through the current series.  Nobody pins down their patterns to the fabric.  The sewers weight down the pattern pieces but that won’t help if a) you’re trying to fit every piece into a tight block of fabric, and b) you’re trying to accurately cut on the bias (because one slight slip and you’ve lost your 45 degree angle).  

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

- Pip

PollyWollyDoodle

The trouble is that the act of pinning can distort the fabric. 
I grew up using pins (I often cut out my patterns on the living room carpet, it wasn’t unusual to find I’d pinned the fabric to the carpet!) but I’ve recently moved to using pattern weights.  

If it’s something slippery then I agree pins might be needed, but I actually find the weights easier to use and move around.  Mine are mostly things like tins of sardines, pebbles etc - I don’t have any of these fancy little sandbag type weights.  I’ve also recently got some of those clips that you often see on sewing videos, they were a Christmas present, and I haven’t actually tried them out yet. They are more for holding stuff together while you sew it, though. I still use pins for that. 

Laura_Elsewhere

I'm a pins girl, every time! I had become very frustrated with pins in the last 20-odd years as they always seemed to have sharp snags on the tips that caught at the material, or were so blunt and thick they left great gaping holes in the material... eventually, I thought soddit, and tracked down some boxes of vintage pins in gloryhole-junkshops and eBay and now I have four or five different kinds of pins and I really do have special fine, extra-long ones for fine slippery fabrics, and short strong ones for thick wool, and so on and so forth! I even have white brass pins which I use for pinning out lace shawls to block them as the shawl is wet to start with and it means no risk of rust! 
A friend gave me a cardboard chest of drawers about a foot wide, 9-10" tall and 4" or so deep, four wide shallow drawers- it had Terry's chocolates in it in about 1960-odd, and I actually had one years ago that came from my Nana's house, that I kept using for years and years... anyway, this one has all my pins and needles kept all in one place. I have a dozen or so ordinary pins in my pin-cushions for general purpose, and a small packet of four dozen "Newey Adamantine Plated Pins" for general sewing  

Laura_Elsewhere

My Older Niece is living through a bit of wartime experience- she is now safely working on Vancouver Island, but for her first year in Canada, she lived and worked in a small town, Jasper, Alberta, which was almost solely a ski resort in winter and popular with campers in the surrounding national park in summer... she only moved a few months ago. 
Last year when we worried about wildfires, she airily assured us that because Jasper brings in so much money to the district, they make sure it's never at risk of burning, and sure enough the wildfires were kept at bay. 
This year, that approach has failed for the first time ever. Everyone has now been evacuated, literally everyone, and all her friends are not only homeless but jobless as well, as the entire town looks as if it will burn. ON's old work has burnt down, the coffee-shop she loved has burnt down, literally street by street the entire town is going. 

She is very badly shocked- as are we but hugely thankful she wasn't there!! - but the photos she has sent from her friends' doorbell-cameras before they were burnt are very frightening- it's very like the photos from the Blitz, the way completely normal bits of everyday life like a mailbox are clear and untouched in the foreground with a raging orange mass immediately behind and only the structural lines of buildings visible in the flames... 

I don't know what they will do in Jasper- I know in the US, one or two towns have been obliterated in this way, but jings, it's horrible seeing it when it's somewhere we've all grown just that bit familiar with...