2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

maryb

Woohoo! Thank you so much.  Bought and about to sit down with a cuppa.  I've spent today cutting out a dress which I need to get sewn for Saturday.  I was short by two inches so I'm having to cut the facings out of a toning fabric, slightly lighter in weight, which is no bad thing, and I will have to face the hem as well.  After all this is 1942 and we have to be inventive

PipneyJane

Thanks @Cherryfudge .  Purchased.  I’m now resisting the urge to buy the Sewing Bee books, which were advertised alongside it…

In other news, I’ve spent another 4 coupons on yarn.  It’ll get used, but I’m feeling rather shamefaced.  As you know, I’m actually trying to use up stash, so my current socks-on-the-go have contrasting heels and toes in cream. (You knit the leg of the sock, insert a lifeline, then knit the foot, add a contrasting toe and then do the second sock.  Finally, remove the lifelines and knit the heels in the contrasting colour.) This is the first completed sock.



I’ve actually knitted this one twice, because I got 42 rounds down the leg of the second sock and realised I definitely would not have enough coloured yarn for the foot, so  I ripped out the contrast toe, then “stole” 18 rounds of the main colourway. That meant I had to shorten the leg of this one to 42 rounds from 60 rounds, so once I’d finished the toe of the second sock, I ripped this one back to the ribbing and reknit it.  (Yes, that stripy section is a flaw in the yarn and has been there since manufacture, when it was tied in as it was being balled up.)

Sadly, once I’d inserted the heel on Sunday, there was only a metre of the contrast left.  Ravelry tells me that I have another skein of the contrast but I’ve been through all the boxes in the stash and it isn’t there.  I’ve used this cream coloured yarn multiple times for the feet of socks when there wasn’t enough of the main colour to do more than the leg, probably some on pairs that weren’t recorded in Ravelry.  (This was before I learned how to make afterthought heel socks that would actually fit me.). The last time I used some was for the contrasting trim on my friend’s pink fingerless mitts.

Yesterday, while DH went to sign on at the job centre in our local market town, I visited the neighbouring yarn shop that occupies a permanent stall in the market, blindly hoping against hope that they might have something suitable.  I was out of luck.  Their 4-ply selection was 100% acrylic, (as is most of the rest of their stock).  

The next nearest yarn shop is a branch of Hobbycraft, whose email today contained a Spend £15 get £5 off voucher.  The only sock yarn they carry is West Yorkshire Spinners Signature Sock, mostly at £9 per 100g ball (although some colourways are £11 each!).  After thinking about it for several hours, I caved and ordered two skeins for click-&-collect, a cream one and one in the Wood Pigeon colourway, spending £13 after the discount was applied.  I already had one skein of Wood Pigeon, so that means I can now make 3 pairs of socks in that colourway.

I’m really hoping this wasn’t a false economy.

- Pip. (Off to amend my signature.)

Cherryfudge

I really like the look of your socks, @PipneyJane. With regard to buying more yarn, well, it's probably like that thing about turning the QE2 round. It will never pivot on a sixpence. As you're a serious yarn connoisseur, a few exceptions are to be expected.

Re: the book - it never offered me any Sewing Bee options! What have I done wrong?

MrsCD

Love the socks and mittens!
Thanks for the recommendation about Patrick's book. 
Sixpence......I heard a story about a sixpence the other day on mousiemakes episode 180 on YouTube. The story is at 8.30 minutes.
https://youtu.be/pH8VXcL_MsM?si=4G2AT86e80MhFB3X

Cherryfudge

Thank you for the story, @MrsCD! How lovely! It's quite thought-provoking: a sixpence can be spent time and again till a thousand pounds has been spent... sort of a metaphor for each of us.

PipneyJane

That is a lovely story @MrsCD.  Thank you for sharing it.

 - Pip

Sarahspangles

PipneyJane said:

What is everyone else working on at the moment?  Do you remember the teal coloured jumper I was knitting where I knitted the sleeves in the round and discovered the sleeve heads were too small for the armholes because I hadn’t taken into account that there were no decreases in the pattern for the underarms?  Well, I’ve ripped them back to the 8th pattern repeat and am reknitting them flat from that point.  Hope to get them finished within the next week.

I’m still working on the Alfredo gloves that went on holiday with me! They were a pattern that seems to call for two yarns that don’t offer much contrast, which is what I had.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/alfredo-gloves

The first is finished apart from weaving in but I’ve had to rip back the second three times because I’ve dropped a stitch or got the repeat wrong. I’m finding them useful as a ‘refresher’ since I haven’t picked up the needles for a while, hopefully where the tension is a bit off it will be resolved when I get to blocking.

That’s an impressive Finishing Off project!

maryb

Clothes rationing actually started on 1 June 1941.  Does anyone know what the rationing periods were?  I know we work on 66 coupons for a calendar year on here but if you were "naked with a cheque book" on 1 June 1941 how many coupons did you have for the rest of the year?  That would actually have been the time of year when women were thinking about what they needed to replenish their winter wardrobes and winter clothes were heavier on coupons than summer clothes because of the wool content and didn't lend themselves quite so easily to remaking of existing garments.  So if you needed a new winter coat that was 14 coupons already spoken for

As we have just passed 1 June I'm thinking of drawing a line under my earlier extravagances and starting afresh for the remainder of the year with 33 coupons.  In which case I already have a (considered) spend to declare - a pair of smart but comfortable sandals in the Hotter sale 5 coupons leaving 28 for the rest of the year.  But fortunately, I don't need a new coat

Sarahspangles

maryb said:

Clothes rationing actually started on 1 June 1941.  Does anyone know what the rationing periods were?  I know we work on 66 coupons for a calendar year on here but if you were "naked with a cheque book" on 1 June 1941 how many coupons did you have for the rest of the year?  That would actually have been the time of year when women were thinking about what they needed to replenish their winter wardrobes and winter clothes were heavier on coupons than summer clothes because of the wool content and didn't lend themselves quite so easily to remaking of existing garments.  So if you needed a new winter coat that was 14 coupons already spoken for

As we have just passed 1 June I'm thinking of drawing a line under my earlier extravagances and starting afresh for the remainder of the year with 33 coupons.  In which case I already have a (considered) spend to declare - a pair of smart but comfortable sandals in the Hotter sale 5 coupons leaving 28 for the rest of the year.  But fortunately, I don't need a new coat

I just had a Google and this link suggests it was 66 for a full year from June to end May. You used your 26 margarine coupons first, and could then show your empty ration book and get a book of 40 clothing coupons.

The first year seems generous, the next book was 60 coupons but to last 15 months - presumably to September 1943.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/source-1-BT.64.3026.jpg

ETA - I think you'd have 38.5 to the end of the calendar year starting from the beginning of June

potplant

Thank you very much, @Cherryfudge, for the heads-up on the Patrick Grant book! Very impressed, and entirely fits my ethos of making, improvising  and repairing, but such a lot more history and social analysis than I'd expected. (Please can we have Patrick Grant for Minister of Trade and Industry in our new Government?  I refer, of course, to our post-War Government-to-be....)