2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

CapricornLass

A spend of 5 coupons, on a dressy cream jumper to wear to Christmas events.  I'm fed up of what I have, and I have the coupons, so I thought why not?  Total spend for year = 39 coupons.

Nelliegrace

I braved the snow to go to the County W.I. meeting with about 300 other seniors.
We had a talk on sausage making courses and similar courses, a lovely demonstration of making wreaths and flower arranging using British-grown flowers, evergreen foliage, some berries, and willow, which were picked yesterday, just missing the snow, and in the afternoon we listened to Will Kirk being interviewed about his career in woodwork restoration. There were displays of artificial flowers, Christmas decorations and cards made with scraps of felt and fabric, and some wool fibres used to make felt. A good Make Do and Mend themed day.

We took our sandwiches and I took my flask of tea and a well wrapped mug.
I heard that some places had run short of crockery and today paper cups were being used, when we are all asked to save paper for salvage. 

The Staffordshire WI, “Country Markets,” is closing after about 100 years. It was a place where members could sell surplus fruit and vegetables, and homemade cakes, pies and preserves would earn some useful income. 


I bought a small Christmas cake, and some beautiful homemade soaps, nettle and rosemary, and honey and orange, sold in aid of the Cat’s Protection League. Such a useful thing to find now soap is being rationed. There were some stalls selling clothes, but a lot had synthetic fabric. I chose to save my clothes coupons for clothes which will last. 

I thought I had saved this cutting from The Times, now just two small, folded sheets, eight sides, to save paper.
Perhaps the WI should do classes on using a drop spindle to make scraps of fleece into knitting wool?

thriftwizard

Good haul, @Nelliegrace! And that's a classic cutting, too.

I remember talking to an old boy from Wool, near Wareham, who told me that he & his siblings used to gather wool from fences & bushes for his grandmother, who would spin it up raw & knit it into seaboot stockings, which were in high demand from the local fisherfolk. That was her living; they didn't come cheap but they were reputed to be the very best, better than anything you could buy from a shop. While she was spinning & knitting, the grandkids would sit on the beaten-earth floor in her cottage & she'd tell them their family history, traditional Dorset tales & fairy stories. No tv, no computers, and they were never bored or cross for one second. "Not like my own grandkids, always whining, always wanting..." he said sadly. 

Sarahspangles

I wonder what the dandelion roots, autumn crocus, acorns, beech mast and horse chestnut were for? The second of those is a source of colchicine -maybe wartime pigs had gout?

basketcase

Sarahspangles said:

I wonder what the dandelion roots, autumn crocus, acorns, beech mast and horse chestnut were for? The second of those is a source of colchicine -maybe wartime pigs had gout?

Acorn and beech masts can be used to make flour, I think. And/or coffee.

Roasted dandelion roots are still used as a coffee substitute.  Dandelions can also be used in dyeing.  IIRC you get yellow from the flowers, green from the leaves and (rather surprisingly, I thought) magenta from the roots.

As for autumn crocus, I thought it was poisonous...

Sarahspangles

basketcase said:

Sarahspangles said:

I wonder what the dandelion roots, autumn crocus, acorns, beech mast and horse chestnut were for? The second of those is a source of colchicine -maybe wartime pigs had gout?

Acorn and beech masts can be used to make flour, I think. And/or coffee.

Roasted dandelion roots are still used as a coffee substitute.  Dandelions can also be used in dyeing.  IIRC you get yellow from the flowers, green from the leaves and (rather surprisingly, I thought) magenta from the roots.

As for autumn crocus, I thought it was poisonous...

I saw Ray Mears cook acorns, and it was a very long winded process! I didn’t think of dyeing.

My mother, who was born in 1939, taught us to identify pig nuts for their edible roots, she also called new hawthorn shoots ‘bread and butter’ because they used it like salad.

Nelliegrace

Autumn crocus is toxic, but is used as a medicine for rheumatoid arthritis.

Cherryfudge

This thread is endlessly fascinating. I would never have space for a spinning wheel but have looked thoughtfully at drop spindles... Despite living in Yorkshire, I'm not sure I could easily find enough raw wool for more than one sock a year, but thank you @thriftwizard for capturing the story about the raw wool stockings. The lady must have had a hard life but, I assume, soft hands from all the lanolin!

Nelliegrace

Granny had us collecting raw wool from barbed wire for her chilblains. 
The new electric spinning wheels are tiny, @Cherryfudge.

Laura_Elsewhere

Raw fleece used to be knitted into oversized hats to make them virtually weatherproof as it sheds the water. They are called 'thrums' and the great Sally Pointer makes and sells them but also sells a pattern for knitting your own... 

I've used thrums the other way round, knitting a twist of raw fleece collected from the hills into the wrists of mittens so that there's a fleecey cosy draught-stopping inner lining. And I used kapok knitted into the inside of the soles of some thick house-socks for my niece, so her feet were in a thick squishy cosy layer  

I'm glad I have so much cosy wool- went swimming this morning in my quarry, water 8ºC and air temp at zero! 

Very beautiful in the sun and snow (another couple of inches overnight, on top of 4 inches yesterday) - and we saw a heron catch his breakfast only about twenty feet from us as we swam! 

I was glad of a hot drink afterwards- I bought this tiny enamel tin mug from Tebay services a few weeks ago Just right for a small hot drink!