2025 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Baileys_Babe

The shawl is gorgeous @PipneyJane your friends are very lucky to have you knitting presents for them.

Liverpool_Anne

Merry Christmas everybody 😁. We are off to OH's Dsis for the day so am up at the crack of sparrow legs 😂. So far clothes wise I have got a t shirt, a fluffy and very warm zip up fleece and a pair of socks. All fit and gratefully received. Lots of other lovely things including edibles and nice candles which will be eaten and used up in the near future 😁. 
Hope everyone has a lovely day spent exactly how they like it.
Thank you @PipneyJane for running the thread and keeping me accountable 😁. Looking forward to seeing you all in 2026
Take care everyone x

Cherryfudge

Laura_Elsewhere said:

I use homemade bread made with 40%oats but any good bread will be fine, one with a good nutty flavour is best. Tear it into pieces about 1cm across. I use about 75g for the two of us... meanwhile, chop half a small-medium onion and mince it finely with a knife, chopping in every direction. Stir that into the bread and add enough milk to cover it. Either mix it in a bowl and then ping in microwave for a minute at a time stirring well between pings, and you'll want at least 6 or 8 pings, or make it in a small saucepan and heat gently on the hob. While it's heating grate half a nutmeg and add that, with a shedload of fine black pepper.
When it's ready it will suddenly change texture from bread in milk to a gloopy thick sauce. Add more black pepper to taste.

it should be a thick dollop, not remotely pourable, and it should taste of onion and nutmeg and black pepper as well as milk and nutty bread. 

I made a bread sauce this year for the first time - sort of part way between what a handy recipe said and Laura's version. Not because I lack faith in Laura but because I was in a hurry and hadn't written this version out. I used a wholemeal bread because in my experience white goes sort of slimy when soaked. My recipe didn't say to cut up the onion, though, and the spices were limited to four cloves which meant there wasn't much flavour. So without even having tried it, I'm going to recommend Laura's!

I didn't throw out the clove-studded onion. It seemed like a waste to do so, but I had no plans for it either, so, having noted that your onion is minced up and left in, I think that's what's going to happen with the rest of the onion when I heat up the rest of the bread sauce. I'll add nutmeg, too - that was sadly lacking.

PipneyJane

Good evening All

How were your Christmases?  I’ve just made a fresh pot of tea. Please have a cuppa and a mince pie.  

I have a spend to declare:  2 coupons on a pair of running leggings from L!dl.  £5.59 spent.  That brings my total spend to 53.5/66, leaving 12.5 coupons to go.  

I am trying to talk myself out of blowing it all on yarn. I’m suffering from knitter’s FOMO.  Over the last week, I’ve read Esther Rutter’s This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain’s Knitting History.  Each chapter is dedicated to a particular garment or style of knitting, but there is a lot of information about the fleece and yarn from which it was originally made.  In the second last chapter, “Haps, Shawls and New Arrivals”, Esther talks about Boreray sheep, the UK’s rarest breed with less than 900 breeding ewes.  It’s also one of the more ancient, given that Boreray is an island off St Kilda and the St Kildans only visited it once a year to sheer their sheep.  When St Kilda was evacuated in 1930, the Boreray flock was left behind, isolated and untouched for over 40 years.  The only place you can buy their yarn is from Blacker Yarns, who blend it with Soay and Shetland and sell it in packs of 5x50g hanks of lace-weight.  

I want it because it is rare, hard to obtain, and who knows if they’ll do another batch next year? (100% FOMO.)  Logic says that if I buy it, I’ll need to buy two packs, 10 x 50g skeins, and knit it up doubled to get a 4-ply yarn.  I have the coupons.  If I raid my Clothing Fund, I can afford it, but do I really need more yarn?  No.  I’d need to knit 6-8 jumpers a year for several years to clear my stash..

Arrghhh!!!    I’ve been arguing with myself since Christmas Eve.  If I’d had a better signal at my SIL’s, I’d probably have bought it when the yarn lust hit. I want it; I can afford it - both cash and coupon cost - but when will I knit it?  I have more than enough yarn. Sensible me is arguing with my inner knitter, and around in circles I go again.

Humph!

- Pip

Cherryfudge

My Christmas has been lovely so far thanks @PipneyJane, though as usual I seem to have spent a disproportionate amount of my coupons on socks for other people. Why are socks (nice ones in particular) such a handy present but such a drain on my coupons? Men's ones are particularly expensive in terms of coupons.

Regarding the yearning for yarn, is there any other that you would be willing to sell or donate in exchange for it? 

PipneyJane

Weirdly, @Cherryfudge, I think writing about the yarn lust made it wear off.  I don’t want it any more.

- Pip

PipneyJane

The new thread is up. Please join us on the

2026 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

As discussed, we’ll use the revised coupon listing from July 1941.  That means I’ll probably have to do some editing of the first post, so apologies in advance for any discrepancies. 

- Pip

alicef

We have survived Christmas - lovely, but exhausting.  We went lane swimming this morning.  Usually I feel quite zen following, but the leisure centre has a free trial week running at the moment; it was frenetic.  Nursing a cup of tea at the moment.

A gorgeous shawl, Pipney.  I have no will power when it comes to yarn.  I was drifting round a local hospice charity shop, waiting on the OH, (hair cut), the other day.  Look what came home with me.....

 

all 100% wool 4 ply.  Luckily I have a vintage KAL kicking off in the new year.  

Cherryfudge

PipneyJane said:

Weirdly, @Cherryfudge, I think writing about the yarn lust made it wear off.  I don’t want it any more.

- Pip

One of the many benefits of this thread.

... for which my thanks @PipneyJane. Year on year it's a go-to favourite, not only because it helps me rein in my clothes spending, but also because of the delightful company and bank of interesting knowledge.

I'll be joining the new thread of course - but I think I need to give serious thought to how I spend my coupons. I've lost track of how many socks I've bought for other people this year but it's definitely made a dint in my coupon allocation. Would it be completely cheating to exclude gift buying?

Thank you, too, for all the work that's gone into getting the new thread going. I love that we have all that information at the top of the thread, faithfully updated, too.

I've just realised I bought a dress for DGD - but that will be coupon-free as she was 3 at the time. Now she's 4, I think she leaves the coupon-free things behind, though if I remember rightly, there may be some change there in the new dispensation. With three little grand daughters, you can imagine the temptation to spend on clothes is there, but they all inherit and are gifted so many that it would be pointless me buying much. The Christmas dress was a 'princess' one - she has many but it replaced an identical favourite that she's outgrown but which would be a wrench to pass on to her sister as she wore it often. I'm hoping that having one in the right size will make that easier, and I've just been sent a photo to show her wearing it today.  

maryb

Well I ended with a very small surplus which I suspect I have now overdrawn but I'm not sure how many coupons I need to count.  It's a pair of 100 denier thermal tights.  Lovely and warm.  But I suspect they can't be counted in the tights dispensation (although they are as thick and unsexy as the actual day to day 1940s stockings!!)

ETA  I think I'm ok - I was misremembering the number of vouchers for tights thinking it was 4 not 6.  As I only bought 2 x 4pair packs this year I still have some vouchers which I can exchange for thermal tights woo hoo.  Might even go back and get another pair, there's some v v cold weather coming in over New Year.  Skirts with warm tights are much warmer than jeans (as well as being more comfortable after Christmas indulgence!)