Week 52

It's actually been more than a year, but some weeks I didn't count because of vacations, etc. I know that most of my posts have to do with food storage, but this post was on one of the forums that I frequent.  You may want to hit your favorite store for items of need.

I wanted to pass on verification of the 'talk' I had been hearing and reading about the price of cotton sky rocketing. Multiple crops of cotton worldwide failed this year due to weather and other causes. The previous year was also a bad year for cotton, silk and wool. The sewing community has been a buzz about the price of cotton futures and my short trip to JoAnn's yesterday confirmed the worse. Nearly all cotton fabric was 50-80% higher than it was a few weeks ago and many former cotton/polyester blends are including a greater percentage of polyester. Now, I know all of you really don't care about the cost of fabric, BUT this price increase is going to bleed over into the commercial clothing industry in the next few months. Fabric by the yard increases in price before ready-to-wear. Experts are predicting that the current by the yard prices will hit their peak in May or June--possibly as much as twice what I saw yesterday. The total expected increase is 150 to 200%. Of course, thread will increase proportionately as well as the other materials needed to produce clothes. The prices are expected to stay record-breaking high for the next two years. To give you an example of the rate of inflation in the fabric market, fabric I paid $2.99 a yard for last week was $5. a yard yesterday. Denim went from $8 a yard last week to $13 a yard this week. I nearly had a panic attack. Instead, I just walked out of the store and came home to use what I had.

More later...