Fashion on the Ration – Update

Hello,

I do hope you’ve been having a good first quarter of the year, it’s been a wee bit all over the place for us to be honest with dog issues and the weather cancelling our much needed holiday.

Whilst that is the case, having the holiday being cancelled means I have some more time to update this little space of mine with two items, first this update of my Fashion on the Ration challenge and then secondly (will be a separate blog) what I’m going to be doing with my items.

As you’ll be aware I’m keeping myself to the 1941 Clothing Rations, mainly so that I a) make an effort with my wardrobe and b) don’t overbuy yarn which is a habit of mine.

With this in mind, I’ve got my first two items that I’ve bought in this first quarter, firstly a pair of Lucy and Yak dungarees, in black. These were bought because my only other pair of pants that are suitable for proper wear went in the crotch, as such I needed something to wear. I’m hoping to fix my other dungarees but need to make sure I do it in a way which won’t make them worse.

Anyway I really wanted the corduroy version but they didn’t have a colour which tickled my fancy and I thought the black ones would suit a wide range of my clothes. To be honest the black still feels very harsh and I’m hoping at some point the colour bleeds out a wee bit to they become muted. Quite hilarious having been a goth in my younger years!

Dungarees = 6 coupons

Next up is 8 balls of 50g yarn, Drops Nord in the colour way blush. Now I know I currently have two cardigans on the go (both of which are in the naughty corner, hence why there hasn’t been an update) and I’m also knitting a Jan Sweater but the Vintage Ravelry group I’m in started another knit-a-long and I normally never do these. I’m just not fast enough but the last knit-a-long gave me the push to knit my Peggy Vest, so I’m going to be using this challenge to knit up another top.

The blush colour way is so out of my league it’s unbelievable, I don’t own anything in this colour but once I’d decided on my pattern I knew I wanted a colour to match, so it’s going to be an exciting knit. Just going to knit up my Jan Sweater first so at least one project is finished before I start a new one.

8 balls of 50g yarn = 8 coupons.

Both items = 14 coupons

Starting Ration Points = 66

Ration Points Left = 52

Overall, I’m happy with my first lot of “Ration Spending,” I’ve been wearing the dungarees for a week now so will be keeping track on how long they last, which will give me an idea of when I need to buy next, fingers crossed for a while. I’ll be keeping more an eye out for these ones and once the crotch starts to go I’ll be reinforcing it and doing my best to keep them going.

With regards to the yarn, I’ll be making sure I make my top, knowing how many points it’s taken from me (more than the dungarees), I’m going to have to make it worth the amount!

TTFN

Nessy

WW2 Rations in the Little City // Week 5

Hello all,

I hope you’ve been having a good week, so I didn’t put a list up last week as there was no point, we didn’t go shopping again as the back account wouldn’t allow it, and I thought that no one wants to just see a random menu plan.

Now can you believe we are in Week 5, super glad we’ve gone past the first 4 weeks and quite surprisingly, I didn’t really go into this shop with a shopping list, normally that means I would have spent over £70 and really would of had anything to show for it, super happy to keep our spending to below the £35 I’ve picked for myself and pick up items we needed.

So above is my receipt, saves me writing it out. As always below is the rations we are working to.

Butter: 4oz – (bought for this week and next)
Bacon or ham: 8oz (not bought)
Margarine: 8oz (bought for two weeks)
Cooking fat/lard: 4oz (bought for a long long time! 7 weeks to go till it’s “paid” off)
Sugar: 16oz (not bought)
Meat: Approximately £6 (quorn was on offer, so bought lattices for Sunday Roast, £1.50 and the Tofu was on offer to, from £3 to 75p so couldn’t help get two for my lunches. Total spent £3)
Milk: 6 pints (we get this each week)
Cheese: 16oz (ek, went a bit overboard here, AGAIN, wow us and cheese hey, anyho, 16oz was bought for micheals cheese slices and then another 19oz over that for adding to the pantry. This will mean no cheese next week and 3 oz off the week afterwards. Really going to have to start writing this down, so I remember!)
Eggs: 24 per 4 week period (not bought)
Tea: 4oz (not bought)
Jam: 2lbs every two months. (Not bought)
Sweets & Chocolate: 24oz every four weeks (have enough still in stock)

Turning towards the points available for this 4 week block, you’ll remember that the last time I did a post, Michael had bought a lot of cereal and I wanted to make sure that it was correctly managed.

So I am starting on 24 points of which, I bought my own cereal at a cost of 7 points, this leaves us with 17 point for the next 3 weeks, will have to be very careful on what we buy so we don’t go over the points, again.

Now you will see three items in the photo and shopping list which are very much not ration friendly, first a birthday cake. This was bought because it was reduced from £14 odd to £3 odd, and I really couldn’t pass it up

Secondly is the crisps which were bought as a treat for my weekend of agility training. Crisps were not rationed during the war, as potatoes were home grown, but I do think they would have been a complete treat and not bought often, so I am allowing myself the treat but obviously won’t be allowed any more crisps till the next 4 week period is up if I want any.

Thirdly is the chips, ek, sooooo my sister normally buys the chips for our pizza Saturday. I would be more than happy to use our potatoes and go from there but a compromise needs to be done as we all have Pizza Saturday. As such and due to these being quite expensive I bought them this week.

Now onto the exciting part, our Menu plan for this coming week,

Breakfast – Having cereal with the other half this week, will be also having a banana on mine.

Lunches – The historic cheese sandwich for the other half and for myself something of a Buddha bowl type thing. Rice with the tofu and vegetables, with an apple or orange on the side.

Dinners

Wednesday – jacket spud with a filling, unsure on what yet

Thursday – bought pastry this week to have a go at homity pie

Friday – Meatballs, mash, gravy and veg

Saturday – Pizza Saturday, we’ve got pizza dough waiting in the freezer (our last batch make 3 weeks worth of pizza! So we’ll worth it)

Sunday – Roast with the quorn lattices. Thinking of making a cauliflower cheese for myself so I can have a bit in the roast and then the leftover for lunch on Monday

Monday – Sandwiches

Tuesday – Slow cooker meal

Snacks – we made a lovely flapjack so currently eating that as a sweet treat with lunch, apart from that it’s fruit to snack on and also the cake we bought will make a few puddings.

Right this it for now, I think

TTFN

Nessy

Lady’s Twin Set – Bairnswear 606 // A Rough Plan and an update

Are you ready for another “let’s work out how to resize an old pattern together along?”

When I left you last week it was on the basis of having made a rough sketch of what I wanted to make and how it was going to come into fruition, as such here is a photograph of my sketch.

This sketch boils down to the key parts of the plan up to a point, whilst being simple and I ask myself the some of the following questions;

How long do I propose the ribbing to be
How long am I going to knit before shaping
How many stitches does it say to reduce and when
How many inches do I need for my arm shaping
How many rows for each button hole

I do have to blanket this post with the fact that I am trying to make an already simple and bare bones pattern even more simple, which probably isn’t beginner friendly. Whilst this is the case at the moment it’s what’s working for me.

As such here’s an update,

First I’ve just got to say this cardigan is delightfully slow going, even though it doesn’t look it. I spent quite a long time over the Christmas period, as I was off work, working on it. As such I got all of the button band done, yay.

I’ve been back to real time knitting for a while now and as such she’s turned into a lovely slow project for me.

Overall loving how she’s knitting up, even though I seem to have to keep ripping her out as I forget to do the button band! I’ve never done a button band which has been connected so this is a proper learning curve.

Till the next installment, which fingers crossed will have part of the body done.

TTFN

Nessy x

Lady’s Twin Set – Bairnswear 606 // Swatch Making and Starting to Knit

Are you ready for another “let’s work out how to resize an old pattern together along?”

Boy am I ready.

Now I think I better preclude this post by saying, I hardly ever swatch, like almost never. The main reasoning for this is that my swatch never matches either the pattern (and then I’m doing drastic changes) or it matches the pattern but is way off when knitting. I swatched my most recent knit, my Peggy Vest but this was mainly to see how the colours interacted and not on sizing, as when I used the swatch to size up, I had to go back and make my top two sizes smaller! So I’m guessing that this swatch of mine will be interesting.

From the get go, as this was a swatch I was making for myself based on what I think I needed, I decided to just do a large part of the front side, as ultimately if I needed the yarn I’d undo the swatch, so I wasn’t worried about how much it used up. I’d also decided to go with my favourite needle size of 2.75mm. I don’t tend to change needles when doing button bands so only had to do the swatch once.

This meant that my swatch included the button band (so I could get a feel of what it would look like), the pattern itself (so I could check height and length and whether I liked it in the needle size I picked) and lastly a large enough amount of plain stitching/ ribbing so I could measure st per in.

Swatch pre- blocked

So this is the block pre blocked and well I should have taken measurements but in my excitement of actually knitting this cardigan up, I forgot doh! Ahh well fingers crossed that doesn’t bite me in the bum later on.

When actually looking at the Swatch, you can see why blocking is the way forward, the button band has a really bad curving over and the pattern itself is very bunched.

Swatch after blocking

So this is the block after blocking and by golly how much nicer does it look? Overall the measurements I care most about are as follows:

Stitched pattern – measures 3 inches
St per In Plain SS – 8st per Inch

Measurements

Ok so with the above I’ve taken the following measurements to get an idea of what I need to calculate to start with,

Neck
Bust
Waist
Hips
Upper arm, at largest point
Wrist
Wrist to underarm
Underarm to shoulder
Hips to waist
Underarm to waist

Moving Forward

Right next I drew a crude drawing of my cardigan to give me an idea of what I needed to do and when, and so that I can come up with a plan, which I’ll share with you next time.

In the meantime because I’m impatient once I got my measurements I started on the cardigan by starting the ribbing. For this I decided to times my waist measurement by my stitches per inch. I’d decided that I didn’t want any ease as that would just add itself, and that I would knit to 3 inches in height and see how that looked.

Also because of the weight I am and the fact that I am altering this pattern myself, I though it would be easier to knit in the round, so I’ve altered the pattern to account for this.

TTFN

Nessy x

WW2 Rations in the Little City // Week 3

Golly what a week hey, so I thought I’d just start this post with a little update on what’s been happening this past week, only because it’s affected our current rations and I want to show that life does happen.

So on Saturday the other half decided to cut himself on an angle grinder, quite badly to be honest, so badly he cut a secondary artery. I have hands down not seen so much blood in my life.

Then on Sunday we helped our friend up at his farm to put up some fencing, this took all day and golly by the time we got home, I was so tired we just had a simple roast. Now normally we would have something out of the freezer and we did but I was super frivolous and we had the Quorn I bought last week, so the lattices for the roast and the nuggets for the Monday lunchtime.

Which I didn’t need to do, as the weather was turning bad so agility was cancelled, which was good because it meant we could help out friend out with getting some cameras up to check on the sheep throughout the day/night. This took golly till 10 odd ish so I didn’t have anything for dinner, but 1000% worth it. I’m am slightly obsessed with watching his small flock! I dream of having my own flock for wool one day so it’s all great learning for me.

This then brings me onto shopping Tuesday, yeahhhh so Tuesday was an anomaly for the Island we got snow, actual snow, which is very rare. Everything looked lovely. Sadly though this meant we didn’t go shopping. We braved the road to go to work and then came straight back home.

Now my sister did go shopping on Wednesday but our bank account was so brassic I decided not to, though the other half went as he was in work and picked up 5 boxes of cereal. The cereal is never in and it’s the cheapest available at the moment, so it’s a buy buy buy when you see it.

This then brings up to our ratios and points.

For this week’s rations we’ve bought nothing but we have gone over on the points. According to The Ministry of Food, Rationing in the United Kingdom, breakfast cereal accounted for 4 points per box. As such because we bought 5 boxes this would be 35 points. Including my salad cream which I cannot find any points on but think I shall put it down as general extra preserves which would be 4.T

This brings our total points to 39, 7 over what we should have for a 4 week period.

I doubt we will go shopping next week, as the bank account wouldn’t have fixed itself but you never know as the Wednesday is payday.

Anyway that’s neither here nor there, what I’m going to do is take two boxes off this 4 week period and add them onto the next 4 week period. Whilst I know this wouldn’t have happened during the war, with the way the world is at the moment with the cost of living, we have to make some choices and those choices might be bulk buying, and well I still want to be within the rations.

This means that my points this week is 31 and I’ll be starting on 24 points within the next 4 week period.

Now onto the exciting stuff, our menu. I won’t back date it to Wednesday but will tell you we had a jacket spud with spaghetti hoops and cheese.

Breakfast – Porridge with water, some HM jam for me and cereal for the other half.

Lunches –Egg sandwiches for me with fruit, cheese sandwich for the other half. Starting a new agility block this year which means I’ll be talking a packed lunch on Saturday, so that will be a sandwich again and due to agility class on Mondays, Monday’s lunch will be leftover roast from Sunday. (Yes I am just copying and pasting this till I change lunches, which I will need to do next week as I only have 4 eggs left!)

Dinners

Thursday – finally blooding eating the fishcakes!!

Friday – meatballs, gravy, mash and veg

Saturday – Pizza Saturday, we made a really good dough last week which made loads, so will be making that again!

Sunday – Roast

Monday – Sandwiches

Tuesday – Slow cooker, thinking Quorn mince with gravy and veg, nom!

Snacks – fruit, mainly apples and oranges for me and whatever we have in stock currently.T

Hope you didn’t mind the update and I am sorry for the late post. Hopefully won’t happen often.

TTFN

Nessy x

Wartime Wardrobe – Vintage Knitting // Lady’s Twin Set – Bairnswear 606

Following on from my Clothing Rations Post, I thought I’d introduce you to what was my Christmas Eve cast on, the lovely cardigan from the above pattern.

Having decided what I needed to add to my Wartime Wardrobe over the course of the next year, a handmade cardigan was right up the top, in the number 1 spot. As such I started to look in the usual places for a cardigan I could knit and soon came to the realization that I had no idea what I am doing at all. Don’t get me wrong I know how to knit and think I can do most things ok but I have no idea how to change a pattern to fit me personally, as any pattern would need to be resized, having only knit modern reproductions where someone else has already done the work for me.

Whilst this was the case, I really do want a (modern) wartime wardrobe, so I started looking for a specific pattern, a general mostly basic stitch with a simple pattern (to keep me interested) which could be modified, and well, this pattern jumped out at me. I absolutely love it and am looking at knitting both the cardigan and the jumper, maybe not in succession but hopefully one day.

I do realize that after the fact of buying the pattern and having looked around, whilst the pattern was sold as a 1940s pattern, the likelihood is that it’s from the 1950s. So isn’t quite true to my wardrobe ideals but still vintage nevertheless.

Which brings me to this point, as I have no idea what I’m doing I thought I’d walk you through (and so I can remember the next time, I want to knit something vintage) on what I’m going to do to make it fit from start to finish, and depending on how this goes, I have several other vintage patterns I need to alter and change to fit me so will do the same for them. A couple of the patterns are well known vintage staples, so that will be very exciting.

Please note this isn’t going to be a how to as I’m not a knitwear designer, it’s just going to be how I’m doing it.

TTFN

Nessy x

WW2 Rations in the Little City // Week 2

My oh my well, this shopping trip went a wee bit overboard!

My total spending this week was £25.93, about £3 over what we had left to spend on shopping. Last week we put our own money into the account so that we could actual spend some money, especially at this early stage when I am trying my best but not quite getting it.

I’m not going to run down everything we have, as it’s a long list but we can fit it into our rations, as follows,

Butter: 4oz (not bought)
Bacon or ham: 8oz (not bought)
Margarine: 8oz (bought for two weeks)
Cooking fat/lard: 4oz (bought for a long long time! 9 weeks to be exact, so we’ll have to make sure that this fits in. I would say that we share the oil so to make it fair)
Sugar: 16oz (not bought)
Meat: Approximately £6 (quorn was on offer so this came to £4.15)
Milk: 6 pints (we get this each week)
Cheese: 16oz (ek, went a bit overboard here, 26oz apparently in cheese, good thing is the Parmesan and the cheese slices will last a while, will be seeing how long the slices last and the mozzarella was to go on our pizza and I might try half this week half next week)
Eggs: 24 per 4 week period (12 bought)
Tea: 4oz (not bought)
Jam: 2lbs every two months. (Not bought)
Sweets & Chocolate: 24oz every four weeks (have enough in stock)

Now onto the exciting part, our Menu plan for this coming week, last week we didn’t quite get it right but we didn’t go over so that’s all that matters.

Breakfast – Porridge with water, some HM jam for me and cereal for the other half.

Lunches –Egg sandwiches for me with fruit, cheese sandwich for the other half. Starting a new agility block this year which means I’ll be talking a packed lunch on Saturday, so that will be a sandwich again and due to agility class on Mondays, Monday’s lunch will be leftover roast from Sunday.

Dinners

Wednesday – Swedish meatballs with mash and veg

Thursday – Sandwiches

Friday – Fishcakes, Mash + Veg

Saturday – Pizza Saturday, would really like to get into a routine of making my own pizza base and sauce.

Sunday – Roast

Monday – Sandwiches

Tuesday – Something from the freezer and potatoes with veg.

Snacks – fruit, mainly apples and oranges for me and whatever we have in stock currently.

Hoping we’ll keep to it this time, then again there is so much happening that it’s taking me a while to get used to everything. Anyway thats all for now.

Nessy

Wartime Wardrobe // 2023 Plans

Oh golly 2023 plans, it feels like only yesterday when I decided to start bringing more Vintage into my life, which also included my wardrobe. Whilst I still dream of a complete second hand vintage wardrobe, the likelihood is that this would never happen, but never say never.

So in some parts thinking of my plans for 2023 have been hard, my current wardrobe is brassic at best (I share T-shirts with the other half) and whilst I never want a full on wardrobe, as in I’d still love to wear t-shirts now and again. I would like to be able to feel more me and put together when out and about generally, which in itself isn’t a big thing but I don’t want to be mindlessly adding items to my wardrobe without thinking about whether they fit or not. Which was one of the main reasons for me to try out the clothes rations for this year.

So basically the below list of items is no5 going to be a be all end all, they are items which I’d like to make and we’ll see from there, maybe.

Bairnswear Ladies Twin Set

Ok, so I’m adding this one first as this is definitely getting made. I love wearing cardigans, absolutely love them. As such I need more cardigans in my life and we’ll, I am currently knitting this one up with a blog post series to come.

Jan Sweater

This sweater is probably in every vintage enthusiast’s wardrobe , as well as a few others I’d like to make, and well I’d like it to also be in mine. I have a sweater quantity of either a forest green or a black. Unsure on which one it’s going to be, and I’m still going to have to fiddle with the pattern to fit me but I honestly cannot wait till I get around to knitting her up.

Angle Face Turban

Yep that’s me during lockdown, loved those glasses. Anyway this was my first Angle Face Turban, I’d bought the yarn especially and golly I cannot tell you how much wear this beauty gets from me, I honestly love it to the moon and back and beyond. As such I’d love to knit a version in black so I can get more wearability from it. I won’t stop wearing my lovely green version but having a black one will give me more options.

Maureen Sweater

Oh my! Whilst not vintage she is vintage inspired and well Sydney hasn’t done a pattern I haven’t loved yet, and still need to knit. I did start on the scarecrow vest when it was first available but lost steam, kind of still want to knit one, anyway I digress. As soon as I seen this beauty on Instagram, I knew I had to make her, unsure on what colour as of yet but she’ll probably be something delightfully rich. Maybe an aubergine purple…..

Plain Cardigan

Image may contain Clothing Apparel Human Person Sleeve Anna Madeley Long Sleeve Coat Overcoat Samuel West and Suit

And lastly on the knitting front I’d really love to knit a plain cardigan a la Mrs Hall in the newest remake of All Creature Great and Small, which in itself has so much knitwear that I love! I’ve got an idea of a pattern in mind, Stockbridge by Ysolda Teague. Which is a lovely basic fingering weight cardigan and I’ll add some pockets on. Again unsure on the colour by maybe either a rich green, dark grey, black or a mix… yep leaving that one wide open.

Vintage Inspired Dungarees

Now I’m a newbie when it comes to sewing, I did manage to sew a dress during Covid and then managed to size myself out of it almost instantly by putting weight on, typically. Whilst this is the case, I do live in dungarees at the moment (run and fly ones to be precise) and I love them, just wish they had more of a vintage cut as in higher in the body and I’d love them to be in corduroy. So one of my aims this year is to maybe sew some, unsure on how getting the fabric will work with my rations but will to see how it goes.

A skirt

Lastly I’d love to sew myself a skirt. I already own a lovely orange skirt of the one shown above but once again, Covid weight means I cannot fit into it, whilst I’ll be looking at slimming down to fit back into it, this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to sew up my own, because I’d love to, maybe in a tartan or corduroy would just be amazing.

Right that’s the list, now I’d lovely to get all these ticked off my list, whilst I don’t know what the year holds, I do know adding the above items will just move me that much closer to my dream wardrobe and we’ll get if I manage to I’d love to sew up another dress, boy that would be amazing.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing every else’s plans for 2023, in what they are wanting to sew etc.

TTFN

Nessy x

Life Lately // 8th January 2022

Just some photo’s and words from our life this week,

We’ve had two pumpkins sat in the kitchen since October, so I decided to have a go at some natural dog treats. Dogs absolutely loved them.

Defrosted our fridge and gave it a good clean.

We took Joey out for the first time in his wheels since his Vestibule Episode and with some treats as encouragement to get him started, he absolutely loved it.

Pondering our garden and how I can become as self sufficient as possible from it whilst still having garden for the dogs. This is the most recent layout. Each square is a sq foot.

Still knitting like the wind, an amazing girl at work is having he4 first baby at work, so I’ve been knitting this baby blanket for her.

Corrines birthday on Friday, 43 ek!

Joey did ok at hydro, he needed the donut and we slowed his walking down for a few sessions on the treadmill.

Spent today doing a little trim every hour on Joey so he’s got a lot less hair, makes clean up and the smell of pee a lot less.

TTFN

Nessy

WW2 Rations in the Little City // Eating from the Pantry – Week 1

We’ll let’s start with this month is going to get interesting, all our bills have finally come out of the joint account and we’ve got £22.94 to last us till payday on the 25th January.

Yep £22.94 and 4 weeks to go, which gives me £5.73 a week. Thankfully as you would have seen we have an extensive pantry.

I do understand that this means we won’t strictly be living to rations as per WW2 but I will be basing everything I buy from them, so no deviations and if so, it has to be within our points.

So what did I buy this week, bread and delightfully yellow sticker bread at that which was a total of 29p, yay! Oh and the gardeners world magazine which came out of my own spending budget.

This brings our total for the following week to £22.65.

Normally this would be where I talk about what rations we’ve used and saved but as I didn’t buy anything, apart from bread which would have (if you had the national loaf) been available, there is no need.

Now onto the exciting part, the Menu plan for this coming week;

Breakfast – Porridge with water, some HM jam for me and cereal for the other half.

Lunches – Potato and Sweetcorn chowder for me with fruit, cheese sandwich for the other half. Starting a new agility block this year which means I’ll be talking a packed lunch on Saturday, so that will be a sandwich (I’ve got lots of salmon so probably that) and due to agility class on Mondays, Monday’s lunch will be leftover roast from Sunday.

Dinners

Wednesday – Jacket Potato with a pantry item.

Thursday – Slow Cooker Sausage Casserole

Friday – Fishcakes, Mash + Veg

Saturday – Pizza Saturday, would really like to get into a routine of making my own pizza base and sauce.

Sunday – Roast

Monday – Sandwiches

Tuesday – Fish for me, Corned Beef Bake for the other half, mash and veg.

Snacks – fruit, mainly apples and oranges for me and whatever we have in stock currently.

I’ll put these or at least most of them, as I’m sure you don’t need to see my soup 5 days a row, on my Instagram just so I’ve got a log.

TTFN

Nessy