2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Cherryfudge

Thank you @CapricornLass and @Nelliegrace - we are rich in the human touch today, those are so interesting to read. And @thriftwizard, my Mum remembered the National Loaf too. She would never touch brown bread afterwards!

Nelliegrace

27th, June 1940, The Times.

PollyWollyDoodle

Thank you so much for sharing your mum’s memories @CapricornLass - it really brings that time to life.  

talesfromamicroholding

Golly absolutely loved reading the posts which have sprouted over the weekend. I tried my hand a few times at rationing last year and loved every time. We had to be a bit lenient with the cheese ration as the other half has cheese sandwiches everyday and has done since I meet him 18 years ago! I'm hoping to have another go next year and see how long we do, though this time I think I will have a few weeks of meal plans sorted first as sometimes that was the hardest bit was figuring out what to eat!

Anyway I digress! @PipneyJane, I love the Majestic jumper as well and for once actually like the colours chosen. I think Chrevon will be next on my list to knit once I've finished my latest round of knitting. I've been wanting to knit it for a while but didn't have the brain for the maths to make it my size. I've also got a discount from JA for doing their test knit so with my Mill Member discount I should have enough to afford a jumper weight of actual yarn and not fibre, which will be lovely.

thriftwizard

Thank you, @Nelliegrace, I'll be making that tomorrow!

  @Cherryfudge, as far as I know, Mum's only real connection with the Resistance was that her brother was basically saved by them after volunteering for the rearguard action at Dunkirk; he and a tiny handful of survivors "left behind" escaped across Vichy France, with assistance from a number of heroic souls, & stole a trawler from the docks at Marseilles. None of them had ever sailed before so it took them months to get home; he turned up on the doorstep a month after they'd held his funeral. (He would never talk about it; we did ask, but I think he'd done a number of things during that time that he was far from proud of.) But Mum was partly educated in French, at a convent full of Protestant Norman nuns in Kent, and came from a Huguenot family, so possibly identified with & admired the French - well, the resisting ones, anyway - and has a very lively imagination too! 

Laura_Elsewhere

thriftwizard said:

  [...] as far as I know, Mum's only real connection with the Resistance was that her brother was basically saved by them after volunteering for the rearguard action at Dunkirk; he and a tiny handful of survivors "left behind" escaped across Vichy France, with assistance from a number of heroic souls, & stole a trawler from the docks at Marseilles. None of them had ever sailed before so it took them months to get home; he turned up on the doorstep a month after they'd held his funeral. (He would never talk about it; we did ask, but I think he'd done a number of things during that time that he was far from proud of.) But Mum was partly educated in French, at a convent full of Protestant Norman nuns in Kent, and came from a Huguenot family, so possibly identified with & admired the French - well, the resisting ones, anyway - and has a very lively imagination too! 

Good god!!!!!

Cherryfudge

Wow, @thriftwizard, what an amazing family! You could easily star in an intergenerational saga. Move over, Downtown!

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

Thank you, @Nelliegrace, I'll be making that tomorrow!

  @Cherryfudge, as far as I know, Mum's only real connection with the Resistance was that her brother was basically saved by them after volunteering for the rearguard action at Dunkirk; he and a tiny handful of survivors "left behind" escaped across Vichy France, with assistance from a number of heroic souls, & stole a trawler from the docks at Marseilles. None of them had ever sailed before so it took them months to get home; he turned up on the doorstep a month after they'd held his funeral. (He would never talk about it; we did ask, but I think he'd done a number of things during that time that he was far from proud of.) But Mum was partly educated in French, at a convent full of Protestant Norman nuns in Kent, and came from a Huguenot family, so possibly identified with & admired the French - well, the resisting ones, anyway - and has a very lively imagination too! 

@thriftwizard, I am in awe!

talesfromamicroholding said:

Golly absolutely loved reading the posts which have sprouted over the weekend. I tried my hand a few times at rationing last year and loved every time. We had to be a bit lenient with the cheese ration as the other half has cheese sandwiches everyday and has done since I meet him 18 years ago! I'm hoping to have another go next year and see how long we do, though this time I think I will have a few weeks of meal plans sorted first as sometimes that was the hardest bit was figuring out what to eat!

Anyway I digress! @PipneyJane, I love the Majestic jumper as well and for once actually like the colours chosen. I think Chrevon will be next on my list to knit once I've finished my latest round of knitting. I've been wanting to knit it for a while but didn't have the brain for the maths to make it my size. I've also got a discount from JA for doing their test knit so with my Mill Member discount I should have enough to afford a jumper weight of actual yarn and not fibre, which will be lovely.

When you do your ration book weeks, @talesfromamicroholding, please share your meal plans.   I have been tempted to try doing this too.

I’m still thinking about Chevron.  I really don’t want to buy more yarn - I don’t need it AND I don’t have the capacity to knit it all, wear it all - but it is very beautiful and there are always Christmas presents and birthday presents (since I’m such a difficult person to buy for).

- Pip


ETA:  Did anyone see this morning’s interview of Dame Harriet Walter on BBC Breakfast?  If not, it’s worth watching on iPlayer (only available for 24 hours).  She comes on at 0750.  She’s talking about her new book, She Speaks, in which she gives voice to some of the women in Shakespeare’s plays. No spoilers but I think Dame Harriet would fit in well in our village.  (And, yes, I’ve added the book to my Christmas wish list.)

potplant

 What an amazing family history!

I think I need to join the coupon counting  - for the first time in a year I'm setting out to buy a new piece of clothing! A pair of jeans - 6 coupons, out of 16 if I start now for this year?
It's not that I am terribly self-denying or very frugal, but I retired quite a while ago, so have no need for work clothes.  Also, I like mending things and don't much like shops!  But I do like sewing, and over the years cloth and clothes stashes have built up  so I'm happily living off them now. 
One is a fabric stash -  last one a length of batik from about 15 years ago which made a lovely dress, (just squeezed it, with only a square inch or two left over!)
 Another is clothes I love but haven't worn for ages because they needed fixing or remodeling in one way or another, which now I have time to do; another is that I've found clothes I bought new (so long ago I'd forgotten them!) but again needed an alteration which while I was working I never got round to.  Current one is a pair of pure wool Laura Ashley trousers, which at the time would just have needed me to turn waist pleats into darts and shorten hems,  but now needed an inch more round the waist 🙄 (taking 2 pleats out was enough) and I shall narrow the legs a bit.  (I'd like to dye them from light camel colour to a bit darker, but I suspect that even 15 or so years ago they were sewn with polyester thread.) 
    I also wear some nice overshirts and tops which were my husband's - he really enjoyed clothes, and after his death a few years ago it feels comforting having them still around.   (Even when we were students, late 1960s, I remember wearing a very sharp suit of his, and I have a lovely golden brown Harris tweed jacket of his which he passed on to me years back, made by Fortnum and Mason no less!)
   This has turned into a massively long screed - apologies, and I shall report back with coupon calculation after my shopping trip!
 

Laura_Elsewhere

Welcome, @potplant - help yourself to a cup of tea from the urn, and if you can find out just where we carefully hid the biscuit-tin so that Scruff the dog didn't get to it, then you can help yourself to biscuits too...

I like the sound of your approach to clothing  


And I've got to alter my signature to update it- just bought *two* new dresses today! Reduced from £65 to £18, from Joanie, both the same but in different colours, pure cotton sun-dresses with elasticated bodices and two tiers of skirts, and pockets (!). One is pink and white stripes and one is green and white stripes... given how long I lived in my blue and white striped similar, I thought I would look for similar ones in the sales! I shan't wear them til next summer but it means I have a range of sun-dresses so shan't need anything next summer (I basically just lived in the blue-and-white one, adding shirt or cardi as needed).