2018 Fashion on the Ration challenge

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

Oops, Dunelm were selling really good quality Rose & Hubble cotton fabrics for 1/3 of their usual price per metre, ahem...

That's blown some points... 21 coupons, oops. I had lost track earlier in the year and so had decided to start again at June 30th with 33 coupons left.

So now I have only 12 coupons for the rest of the year...!

Well...

Luckily I have nearly finished sorting out and cataloguing my entire fabric and yarn collection so I shall just have to work from that!

Don’t kick yourself too hard. Your stash-busting endeavours sound lovely. I’m in awe of your patience re unravelling the mohair sweater. Anyway, if you run out of coupons, at least you’ll have your stash to raid.

It’s August and, amazingly I still have 30 coupons intact! They will probably all be blown on a trip to France at the end of September, where I will visit either the Calais branch or the Bayeux branch of Un Jeur Ailleur.

In the meantime, I’m making in-roads on my most recent yarn purchases. The Regia is now my sock-in-progress, living in my handbag for Tube trips, Prom Concerts (when we sit in the gods*) and long stints in the passenger seat of the car.

You may remember that I purchased a third FUBC kit from Susan Crawford, in order to get enough of the Victoria colourway to make another Sunray Ribbed Sweater. Still not sure what I’m going to do with the 3 skeins of natural yarn, but I’ve made the body and half a sleeve so far. At the moment, I have 56g left - plus the swatch - and am beginning to worry that I won’t have enough. This yarn is a one-off, so if I run out, I’ll probably have to rework the sleeves, making them shorter.

- Pip

* I only knit at Prom concerts if I’m certain the performers can’t see me, since I don’t want to be a distraction. I use wooden needles and pause during the quiet bits. (It’s amazing how intimate the Royal Albert Hall can be when you’re sitting in the stalls, whereas up in the Rausing Circle it feels huge.)

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

Can I suggest the natural yarn might be dyed in a microwave with food colouring? I had never done any dyeing, but started experimenting last year - it must be natural animal fibres, so silk and wool basically - I've dyed wool-blend sock yarns successfully. I only use the bright cheerful colours, so I don't get into complex mixing of colours, but if you would like to try dyeing some of the good yarn, why not dig out a bit of scrap white or pale wool and experiment? I don't know what colour you're about to run out of but perhaps you can dye some that will work as a toning or contrast, to eke out the main colour?
Sometime over winter I'm planning some summer ankle-socks with a vivid rich vibrant jade/leaf-green and deep rich bright burnt-orange yarn which was once upon a time cream


I do love Regia as a sock yarn. A few years ago I bought quite a few balls of grey - and it is so useful as a backdrop for more exciting colours. I think it's become my favourite neutral!

30 coupons is amazing, with only a bit over 4 months left to go.

What's the situation with freebies? i had a set-to over some months with a big online clothing-retailer, ending with their emailing me a coupon code as an apology for their incompetence - it's been enough to order new walking-shoes for me and for Mr Nice. So do those count as a new pair of shoes, or is the fact they were 'bought' with an apology-voucher from the company going to discount their coupon-ness to some extent, completely or partly?

and my current Zauberball sock yarn is free too - that was a special offer where if we purchased a gift-card top-up to X amount, we got £10 extra free, and this is the £10 spent on yarn, only it isn't actually £10 because they gave it to us... er... more coupons, or not?!

Dying the yarn is a thought, but it’s more that I haven’t found a pattern for it yet than the colour. I may just have solved that problem; I was browsing Ravelry this morning and found this: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nympheas The Ghyll is sport weight, so it shoul be perfect.

Re vouchers: I feel your pain, particularly if they have expiry dates. I have a £10 gift voucher from Celtic & Co which will expire at Christmas. It was an apology for a mix-up over an order last year. I love their sheepskin slippers, hats and boots and I’ve been eyeing up their sheepskin coats for years (and saving up), but I don’t have anything in mind for it. I will have to find something to spend it on. (Gloves? Another hat? I no longer work in a portacabin in the middle of a field, so can’t wear their knee-high ugg-style boots to work in winter anymore.)

To add to the pressure, my MIL gave me £70 of Blacker Yarn gift vouchers for my birthday earlier this month. They don’t expire. I just have to hope that it will be next year before their 4-ply Bluefaced Leicester comes back into stock.

It’s up to you how you treat gift vouchers, but I’ve always treated them as cash, not freebies, so that anything bought with them adds to the total coupons spent. I have a vague memory that coupons were issued in tranches, so you might justify the spend as raiding next year’s coupons.

Re the 30 coupons: you may have noticed that virtually all my spends this year have been yarn. (Yes, it’s my weakness.) I’m lucky, in that I have a decent wardrobe of clothes already and I’m not a fashionista. (Very few fashionable clothes from the last 20 years look good on me.) For me, the pressure to purchase clothes comes when things wear out. My favourite stretch jeans will have to be replaced - the fabric is coming apart on the front of the thighs - but I have other jeans to wear until I find a suitable replacement. (Why is it so difficult to get jeans with decent pockets???).

- Pip