The main item on the day's agenda, of course, is Mass at 11.
Since I had some extra time this morning, I decided to pull out a skirt I haven't worn since Lent and mess around with it. I thought I'd pair it with my collarless duck-egg-blue shirt from a recent Goodwill foray, but I wasn't sure how to make it work. I knew the colors would be fine, but this skirt is a little tricky. It's elastic-waisted and tends to ride up to my current natural waist (somewhere just below my bustline), which is okay, if what I wear with it can accommodate that. It doesn't work that well with tucked-in woven shirts. And if I'm not careful, I look super hippy in it, which I guess is an accurate reflection of the state of my body, but when I look like all hips with a tiny little head . . . I do not feel my best, shall we say?
Here's what I ended up with.
Restrained hair, collarless shirt worn as a jacket over the pale-blue tank that I've moved to my undergarment/sleepwear drawer, because it's been developing holes. Fortunately said holes don't show when the tank is tucked in. I'm really happy with the way this turned out – it includes the two major elements (shirt + skirt) that I wanted to include, in colors that I know are good for me, but with lines that create some necessary verticality. My body feels more in proportion, even in a more head-on view where the breadth of the broadest part of my body would be most obvious.
Contrast this with some earlier attempts (again, I had time, fortunately. Otherwise I'd have reached for something tried and true and been done with it).
Here I've tried knotting the shirt.
At this angle, not so bad. But angle is everything, as you can see here (so is facial expression, for that matter; also posture and hair).
Nah. Just too much hips here for my comfort zone. I'd rather take the picture now and know, than realize later that this was how I'd presented myself to the world. So for my next act, I tried the shirt unknotted, and:
I mean, it's not the worst. The hemline is curved, and it does skim my hips, mostly hitting my thigh as it's starting to narrow. That helps the skirt present as a narrower silhouette. I also tried a half-updo, because the tailored shirt seems to ask for more purposefully "done" hair.
Here's a full-frontal view of same:
Again, if my goal is just not to look really wide in the hips, then I've succeeded. Of course, now I just look sort of wide all over, though maybe not so much so as I thought the first time I looked at these pictures. This move is honestly not so bad.
Here, as you see, I'd taken my hair down again. It's Day 3 hair and hasn't been really too wild and crazy, so it could have worked like this. Again, honestly, I could have gone with this, and I might in future. But it still felt kind of off somehow. This shirt does have a really smocky shape as is, so that I've wondered if it was meant to be a maternity shirt. The label just says JHCollectibles, so I don't think it is, but it does look like one. I had thought that by now, so far past any possibility of ever being pregnant again, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me, but I find that it does. I suppose people might wonder: why is she dressed like that when she can't possibly be pregnant? Or is there some kind of St. Elizabeth miracle going on here? My hair isn't gray, and from a distance I do tend to look younger than I am . . . anyway, I'd hate to have to fend off awkward questions or congratulations from people who maybe don't know me. It has happened before, and after my 50th birthday, so I'm a little sensitive to that. The cost of looking so radiant all the time, I guess.
So the shirt-as-jacket option it is. I like the multiple lines that this option creates, breaking up the lines of my body. I like that the top layer creates some depth, to cast my un-flat stomach into shadow, rather than just camoflaging it with a lot of volume that raises the awkward speculations I'd rather not deal with. Maybe in another ten years that won't be an issue?
Wearing my tan fake Birks by default, since I don't feel like heels (though my fisherman's-sandal wedges would work with this outfit), and my Crocs thong sandals broke yesterday. The tan straps provide some contrast, a lighter "frame" to the whole outfit. And what I've got going on here does hit the light-dark-color-pattern benchmarks: very light-blue tank, color in the shirt-jacket, pattern and darkness in the skirt.
Seems like a lot of work and self-absorption, just to come up with a simple, basic outfit. But I'm glad I took the time. Now I can go to Mass and focus on the Mass, not on my body. Again, if I hadn't had the time, I'd have worn something I've worn before, that I already know works this way. I want to dress with particular care for church, but I want this to be the outcome: that I can forget myself for a while, or – to put the same thing another way – be comfortable enough in myself that thoughts about myself don't continually intrude while I'm trying to pray and adore.
Again, no particular wardrobe challenge this week. Just aiming to wear what I have (targeting less-worn items like this skirt) and rest in gratitude.
UPDATE: One last-minute change.
My husband was wearing a tie, so I put on heels to elevate my outfit to the same level. Still got light-dark-color-pattern going on; still got contrast in the shoe. Still waiting for kids to come downstairs so we can leave.
Every item in this outfit is thrifted, including the final pair of shoes. I've had both the skirt and the tank for some years now. The tucked shirt-jacket is new, as of three weeks ago.
Sunday summer-evening windowsill still life:
MONDAY JUNE 21
I've said before that I'm not participating in any wardrobe challenges this month, but that doesn't mean I don't follow other people's challenges on Instagram. In scrolling around this morning (I describe Instagram to my husband as the neverending magazine about everything, and that's how I treat it, reading far more than I ever post), I came across one daily challenge, however, that spoke to me: what are your wardrobe fears?
Of course I have wardrobe fears. This blog is an expression of those fears, and if you've read anything I've written here, you've probably figured out what they are, even if I haven't articulated them or even really thought in terms of what I'm afraid of when it comes to clothes.
So what am I afraid of?
*Chiefly I'm afraid of looking bad and not knowing it until later. I'm afraid I'll dress an image in my head that doesn't in any way correspond to reality. That's the why behind all these selfies. The camera shows me the reality outside my head in a way that the mirror does not – it's like proofreading someone else's writing instead of my own. Proofreading my own writing, the danger is always that I'll see what I meant to say, not what I said.
*I'm afraid of being weird. Growing up, going to a girls' school, in the bubble that that kind of environment perhaps inevitably is, I always felt weird. I felt that I looked weird. I felt that I was weird. I felt that other people thought I was weird. Some of these feelings were accurate, at least if my age peers' reactions to me were any indication. When I think I don't want to call attention to myself, really I think it's that I don't want to call attention to the fact that I'm a weirdo, and that it's easier to pass unseen than to draw mocking or bullying attention by being visibly different from other people in any way.
*I'm afraid of dressing inappropriately for my age, even though most of what seems "appropriate for my age" isn't me at all. I'm not the archetypal mid-50s woman, whoever she is. I'm just me, the same person I've always been (see "weird," above), only older. I'm mostly attracted to clothing I see younger women wearing – though the challenge is not to appear to be trying to look younger. I don't care about looking younger. I do care about dressing in a way that makes me happy. I guess I am grateful that I don't really like things like crop tops or micro-shorts or other teenagey things. My 17-year-old daughter looks adorable in her clothes, but fortunately for me, I don't feel the need to dress like her in every particular.
Note that these are FEARS. It's good to call them out and recognize them, so that I don't mistake them for reasons to do or not do something.
MEANWHILE.
It's going to be a hot one today, even though the rest of the week has projected highs from the mid-70s to the mid-80s Farenheit. I don't have anywhere to go – plenty of work to do, but all at home, and I plan to take a walk before things heat up too much – so I think it'll be a shorts day. I have three pairs to choose from: sage green, slate blue, and yellow. Which will it be, and what else will I wear? Stay tuned . . .
...
Which will it be?
...
...
OK, fine, here's the answer:
I went for some serious blue-on-blue today. Thrifted Liz Claiborne top, thrifted shorts (I forget the label now), old EVA Birks. This outfit would be better with less-matchy shoes, but I do have some subtle contrast in the belt, and these shoes are my most comfortable walking shoes.
The shorts push my comfort envelope just a little. They're shorter than I would absolutely have chosen, though everything else about them is perfect: the fit, the shape, the rise. On the other hand, no body parts are hanging out of them, so I guess that's basically a win.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: welcome back, high-rise trousers of all lengths. How some of us have missed you.
Again, the shoe could provide more contrast than it does, but since we're being intentionally monochrome-layered, maybe it works. Meanwhile, we have light-dark-color-pattern happening, with the light belt in a contrasting color (however subtle the contrast), the dark shorts/shirt background/shoes, the pattern in the shirt. If I were going anyplace special, I'd probably change out the Birks for my tan fake Birks, but for now, this is all okay.
Related: these will probably be my hiking shorts this summer, since my dear old Columbia outdoor shorts are too tight right now. Of the three pairs of shorts I own, these are the least dressy, most rugged, least-likely-to-be-ruined-by-mud ones. They'll probably look pretty boss with my hiking boots. Goodness, I am ready to go for a long day's hike somewhere . . . must convince my hiking partner.
ETA: More Thoughts About Shorts below. In the space of three days I went from "these will be my hiking shorts" to "eh, maybe I'll just never hike in shorts, or ever wear shorts at all again." Stay tuned.
My basic schedule for the week, not tied to any kind of time, just things every day needs to include:
*45 minutes-1 hour walking (to get in at least 6K steps early in the day, preferably before the heat kicks in)
*500 words of prose
*1-2 hours proofing/editing anthology MS
These are my Big Three. I've already knocked out the walk. The day obviously also includes meals, reading, responding to emails and questions in the Facebook group I moderate, etc.
LATER: Did the Big 3. I'll leave you with evening light on the front porch.
TUESDAY JUNE 22
Today's agenda:
*Finish off the permissions process for a poem we plan to include in the anthology; follow up on another permissions email
*Write 500 words of prose
*Gather final transcript materials to send to the University of Dallas for each of my rising college freshmen
*Walk for an hour
*Continue anthology MS revisions for submission deadline in 8 days
So, that's a Big 5, not a Big 3, but these are the things I want to hit in the course of the day. Looks like it's going to be rainy and cloudy all day, with a high of 79F.
Not sure what I feel like wearing today. Probably a dress, rather than shorts. I'll try to reach for something I haven't worn in a long time, like for example this gray empire-waist dress:
I forget when I took this picture – last fall sometime, or possibly Lent, since I think those are purple leggings I'm wearing. Terrible lighting, as usual, and I obviously wasn't feeling it, but there we are. I like this little dress all right, though it's not all cotton/natural fibers (and feels it), and it's starting to develop one or two tiny holes in the fabric. I'll likely outbox it at the end of the season, along with a few other things that are wearing out. But I do have it for now, so I might as well wear it.
As I might have said before, I'm not participating in any kind of challenge at the moment, but I am enjoying following the "capsule-ish wardrobe challenge" on Instagram, as a spectator. I'm not entirely sure what the rules are, and I think there's some new challenge or prompt daily – like "what are your wardrobe fears?" – but it's interesting to me to see what other people are wearing. My favorites on the grid currently include this basic tee-skirt-birks-jean-jacket ensemble (I think her skirt is black, and I'd choose navy instead, but I love the comfortable minimal elements with the contrasting shoe); this purple linen shell with olive-green shorts; this off-white tank and green skirt; these mom jeans with clogs; and this beautiful mauve floral tiered dress. Many good ideas for colors, shapes, combinations.
So here's the simple gray dress for today:
Blue EVA Birks to walk in, and also for contrast in a really minimal, monochrome outfit.
A slightly more profile view:
I could add either a shrug cardigan or my jean jacket to this outfit for more interest, but all I'm doing right now is going walking, so I won't bother.
This medium gray seems like a good neutral, balanced with the saturation of my skin tone and the level of contrast in my coloring:
This is a no-makeup, no-filter shot, in the weird no-direct-sun lighting of my kitchen table in the morning. As much as I really don't love the fabric of this dress – it is manifestly not a natural fiber and does not feel wonderful on my skin, which is probably the main reason I don't wear it more often – this shade of gray does seem to play up, rather than wash out, my coloring. I am thinking that the dress won't outlast the season, because it is wearing out, and it doesn't feel good enough on to pull its weight in my wardrobe, but I will look for more of this medium gray, and also empire-waist dresses, which I feel are flattering to my shape.
UPDATE, 11:30 A.M.:
*walked almost 3 miles in the rain with my husband
*wrote about 650 words of a new story/chapter in my novel-in-stories
*ate a protein wrap sandwich with avocado and my homemade tzatziki
*followed through on the permissions email
Shortly I'm going to eat lunch, then spend some time on the anthology MS. I have a number of essays to prune back to under 400 words, and footnotes to add to poems. Eight days till our submission deadline! By then the work will be far from over – we'll be dickering for some time yet about final inclusions, numbers of poems, numbers of pages, words, &c – but we will have passed a real milestone.
To return to the clothing-oriented theme of this blog, I think of this deadline at least in part because it means we'll be paid the remainder of our publisher's advance. I'm banking most of that money for now, not that it's that princely a sum, but one thing I think I might like to do when the balance arrives is buy a Wool& dress. Actually, I have a balance in my PayPal from some consulting work I've done, so I could just use that and not touch the advance until I have a clear idea what to do with it. Upon reflection, that seems the more prudent way to go.
Meanwhile: I know, I know. I was just talking about Wool& dresses. I was just saying no way to the Wool& dresses. But as I'm contemplating how many things in my current wardrobe are approaching the end of their useful lives, I'm also considering how consolidating a number of outfit possibilities into one investment dress could work for me. AND I'm continually intrigued by the 100-day challenge.
Bear with me here as I think aloud. What I think is that I might invest in a Sierra tank dress in either charcoal heather or washed navy (probably the latter, even though I HAVE blue dresses, for heaven's sake), either of which would ship July 16. The Sierra seems like a good choice: an A-line dress, so avoiding some of the apparent weirdness of their more fitted dresses. Sleeveless would be good for the summer and into the fall – I like that I could wear it with belts, with shirts, cardigans, or jackets over, or with shirts under, as a jumper. I could tuck it into skirts, or wear it over jeans as a tunic or knotted top. I could wear it with Birkenstocks, Converse, Chinese canvas Mary Janes, fisherman's sandal wedges. As the weather got colder, I could wear it with leggings or tights (I actually just ordered some Snag opaque tights in two shades of gray, plus navy, because there's nothing like thinking ahead) and boots, either my tall tan boots or my Doc Martens.
So I could wear that dress for the 100-day challenge, which you want to do because then they send you a gift certificate that basically pays for a second dress. What I think I'd do then, crossing my fingers and assuming it would still be available by then, is buy the Camellia tencel tank dress in plum heather, to wear as a Lenten challenge.
But then I think that all of this sounds awfully acquisitive, and I just don't know. But things are either wearing out, or aren't fitting right, and it would be nice, in seeking replacements, to tighten up the wardrobe overall: fewer, but better, things that last a long time and work very hard.
Things I know I'll need to part with (because they have holes/are falling apart):
*J. Jill shapeless indigo jersey dress (bought new 3 years ago, worn hard)
*Loft periwinkle smock-yoke top (thrifted some years ago)
*this gray dress I'm wearing today (thrifted)
*purple smock-yoked top (thrifted some years ago)
On-the-fence items:
*I don't know how long the Talbots fit-and-flare dress (last seen last Saturday) is going to last. I bought it – last fall? I think? – at Goodwill, and it was already maybe on the verge of being kind of stretched out then. No holes, but some loss of shape. If I were going to buy a real investment-piece dress, I'd seriously consider that this one had served its time and let it go. It's cute and flattering, but also looking honestly more thrifted than I wish it did, for the occasions for which I would generally wear it.
*Any number of thrifted skinny jeans that I like, but that don't fit. I'm going to keep them in the outbox for a while, because I am doing all this walking and logging what I eat, but they might never fit again.
*Pink floral Liz Claiborne skirt (thrifted this spring), which is a size 10, but tight. I just don't know whether it fits well enough to justify taking up space in my closet.
*Any number of tees that are starting to look stretched out or develop holes, or else just don't fit as well as I'd hoped. I want to love my indigo tie-dyed J.Jill swing tee, for example, but even though it is (I think) a petite medium, it's wide in the neck and shoulders, and really kind of too wide all over. It always feels as though it's slipping to one side or the other. My husband likes it, though.
*Gray Walmart cotton tee dress, bought at least five years ago, but starting to look a bit stretched out. It's been a tried-and-true fast-fashion buy, and I could hold onto it, because I do wear it. On the other hand, IF I had a dress that replaced it . . .
*Thrifted blue swing tee dress which I love, but which isn't natural fibers and which has incurred some grease staining. Again, IF I had a dress that replaced this one, I'd pass it along.
Most of the things on my cull or on-the-fence lists are thrifted. Some I've had for years; some are relatively recent finds. Of course, all the recent finds reflect the fact that fitting rooms in thrift stores have been closed, so that I've had to guess a lot. Sometimes I guess well, sometimes not. Fortunately the gamble is a fairly safe one, and being out five or six bucks is not the end of the world. I also figure that I don't have to wear something that many times to have gotten my five or six bucks' worth out of it, though of course I don't want to treat clothing, even thrifted clothing, as a disposable item. BUT if it's really not working for me, that seems a sign that it's meant to work for somebody else, and that after a period of discernment, it's better for me not to hang onto it, waiting for the planets to align differently.
Aaaand enough about that. I do have work to do.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 23
OK, well, I bit the bullet on the investment dress. I'd made money doing homeschool consulting, so the cost didn't come out of either the projected advance or our household budget, which last was particularly important to me. Anyway, it should turn up later in the summer, and I'm pretty excited. I went with the Camellia rather than the Sierra, partly for the cut and partly for the the lapis color, which will wear well on me day to day. The sleeveless design, which I think might be more flattering to me than the Sierra's, will take me from summer heat into autumn – which frankly around here is also mostly hot.
Naturally I'm already counting my $100 gift certificate before it hatches, and considering that I might spring for the Rowena in marine blue for a winter dress. Or possibly this more fitted midi-length tank dress in teal, which would be another year-round dress. A lot depends on what's available when I have a gift certificate to use, since it can take them up to two months to issue you one. But I will get more versatile wear out of blue dresses than dresses in any other color; all those shades will mix with soft grape and other light purples for Advent and Lent.
I will be considering, then, which items in my closet I'm ready to part with.
Yesterday's gray dress is already headed for the outbox. Today I put on my other gray dress, the little Walmart t-shirt dress I picked up as an impulse purchase some years back. I forget how many years back. I've been wearing this dress a long time. Last night, in fact, after I'd taken a post-gardening bath, it was what I threw on for an evening of watching The Crown with my husband: I wasn't ready to put on pajamas, but I did want something as comfortable as. My daughter, wandering through, asked me where I'd gotten this dress ("I've had it for at least five years, sweetheart . . ."), and remarked that she liked it; it was flattering.
So there you go, a vote for the little gray t-shirt dress, which I'm now wearing as follows:
Phase 1: By Itself.
I do like a lot about this dress. I also believe my daughter, whose eye is generally reliable, when she says that it's flattering. At the same time, I'm acutely aware of the weight I've gained in my midsection, which I am simultaneously trying to love and accept and to lose. I'm also trying to unravel the mystery of this bloating I'm experiencing, though I suspect the amount of seltzer water I've been drinking has something to do with it. Possibly also the readdition of grains and more dairy to my diet (because I was sick of missing at least wraps, if not actual sandwiches, and Greek yogurt: that's why).
I look like such a cute second-trimester pregnant lady, except I'm almost 57 years old, and ain't no miracles been happening here, doll baby. See "awkward exchanges," above. Enter a second layer.
This is one of the shirts I bought at Goodwill about a month ago, toward the end of the May 30x30 challenge, and then had to wait to wear until June rolled around. It had a pointed collar originally, but I cut it off. It's a silky microfiber, not the most ethical fabric, but I like the way it feels, and it's a good weight to throw on as a sun shield when I'm outside. The shape's a bit boxy, but when it's unbuttoned it looks a lot less so, and the hemline doesn't line up with the hemline of my dress, so that's all right: multiple lines are better than one unbroken one.
And I love the color. As you might have noticed, I've been ruminating on the reasons why some shades in a color family (which is supposed to look good on people with my coloring) work for me, while others do not. My theory, as again I think I've mentioned, has to do with saturation and contrast, and with achieving a balance with both the saturation level of your own skin tone (are you a delicate porcelain pink? or more robustly rosy?), and with the level of contrast in your features. The higher the contrast, the stronger the tone/color saturation – or so I'm positing, knowing precious little about color theory as it relates to personal style. I'm sort of medium-contrast: darkish hair, darkish eyebrows and lashes, lips with a fairly noticeable natural color, but not as high-contrast as if I had a whiter skin for those darker shades to play off.
Anyway, I think this color does flatter me a lot, though so does gray. I like the minty shade of my hairband with it, too – like a double dip of sorbet on a hot day. The hairband's nothing special, just one of a two-pack of Goody Planet bamboo-fiber bands I picked up at Walmart (at least I'm no longer impulse-buying whole dresses, folks). I've been enjoying wearing soft, stretchy hairbands like this lately, because they keep my hair tidier when I wear it up, and out of my face when it's down. My bangs are growing out, and they're often a bit awkward, so it's nice to be able to shove them out of the way, as I've now done.
Here's me trying extra hard to look as though I've just randomly been caught in bad lighting, gazing at the dishes on the butler's pantry behind me. Of course, every time I scrape my bangs back I'm reminded that my forehead is large and wrinkled (by years of intense thought, let us say). Oh well. There it is. More to learn to love and accept. But how bout them soft stretchy hairbands, amirite? The rest of my hair is just coiled into a bun held in place with a claw clip.
Also, my daughter brought me home a butterfly sticker from work, so now it's on the back of my phone.
Finally: back to work.
LATER (HAVING DONE THE WORK):
Still thinking about this dress purchase. The last time I paid this much for a dress, it was to have my mother's wedding dress altered for my older daughter to wear at her own wedding. $130 felt cheap for a wedding dress. It feels expensive for . . . you know, just a dress.
I'm not really sure why I decided to buy the wool dress. A couple of weeks ago I was dead set on talking myself out of it. I'm still not convinced that I'm not just a sucker for hype, or that I don't want to start myself a whole new selfie Instagram account, for nothing but dress pictures.
But here are things that have occurred to me, other than what I've already mentioned (items wearing out and needing to be moved gently along):
*I hardly ever buy accessories. This came to me when I was ordering my Snag tights. I have so often planned projected outfits around things like tights in colors . . . that I then never get around to owning. I might pick up cheapies at Walmart or Shoe Show, wear them once, and get holes in them. Or I might just not ever buy them at all. I've wanted navy tights for years, for example – and really, it's as simple as just buy them, already. Yet I haven't.
*Part of the reason I haven't bought accessories so much is that I've been so focused on buying clothes themselves. The next top or pair of pants, the next dress. Because they're thrifted, they're cheap. Because they're thrifted, I can go in and just BUY. Because they're thrifted, they're often not really what I want, just what I happened to find. There's both grace and creativity to this – stuff comes to you and you make it work. At the same time, I realize that my whole adult lifestyle, at least in the area of my appearance, has been largely settling for stuff I don't love and making it work. I don't mean to imply that this is a bad thing. Mostly it's a challenge, and I enjoy it a lot more than I would enjoy walking into a store full of new clothes and being given carte blanche to make my own choices.
The good news is that I do enjoy that challenge, and I'll always love thrift shopping. The bad news is that as long as I'm dissatisfied, I'll keep buying more. If I have core pieces that I like, though, and they're a long-lasting investment and not subject to major change, then I can focus my (hopefully more reined-in) budget going forward on filling in things like tights, leggings, scarves, bags, and top layers, as I happen to need them, with the core pieces to keep my needs in focus. Hopefully those items, too, over time, will be better-quality, more sustainably-produced items that will work hard for years. I do also look forward to making those things I never get around to looking for the whole reason to go thrifting.
*My goal is to move to a no-buy year in 2022. I know, I know. "I need all this stuff to go minimalist!" I know.
As I've said before, though, I came to realize pretty fast that this year would not be a no-buy year. Between things wearing out and my size changing, especially in pants, it's been clear that I was going to have to acquire replacements for some major clothing items. One thing that does make me happy about the dress I ordered today and the dress options I might consider with this gift certificate I'm counting on earning is that these are core wardrobe items that will both replace, in two pieces, many pieces that I needed or still need to let go, and that will then stay with me through any weight or other fluctuations. I hope I'm not going to gain more weight, but I could, and my dress would still fit. It will still fit if I drop some weight. Not that I'll never wear pants again – I do plan to cycle pants into my 100-day dress challenge and have been looking at ways to do that – or other dresses or other outfits, ever, but the fact that I will have something good to wear, no matter what, for more or less any occasion, means that I'm that much closer to being able to go a year without a clothing purchase.
*Come the fall, I will probably make another investment shoe purchase. I'm also thinking Ebay, not new, but we'll see. I'm thinking possibly some Doc Martens oxfords or other non-boot shoe, specifically to wear with tights, since I'll have replenished my dwindling store with some comfortable, hopefully durable ones. One good thing about boots all the time is that you can wear leggings as tights, with socks that nobody sees inside the boot. I'll still do plenty of that. But I'm kind of jazzed about these tights, as well as the idea of some other kind of cold-weather shoe to wear with them.
*I will go thrifting for cardigans and other top layers. Again, I have favorites that are starting to fall apart. There are colors I'd still like to add more of to my wardrobe: sage green, for example, and pink, and oatmealy off-whites. Cardigans are a good investment, even as a thrift item, because they too will flex with your weight fluctuations, and they can transform any basic outfit so that it doesn't look like what you wore yesterday. I can look for wool, of course. You never know what you'll find. . . but thrifted cardigans are a great low-commitment way to get lots of mileage out of basic core pieces.
*Over time, I would love to collect some wool t-shirts (long and short sleeved) and leggings, and more wool socks. I have some, though they're mostly the really thick rugged old-style hiking kind. I'd love to replace cheaper non-wool items like that with wool – to have fewer but better, longer-wearing pieces that might serve me year-round. I'm not going to stop loving linen and cotton in the warm weather, but I'd love to lose the synthetic-fiber staples, once they wear out, in favor of items that will last me and be worth having over many years. Meanwhile, I'm not throwing out items that I currently own that have life left in them. This is a long-term plan for when they reach their ends.
*Happily, meanwhile, most of what I have and love will work with my 100-day dress. I chose that dress at least in part because I thought that of all the options, it was the one that would let me make the most use of my existing wardrobe: jackets, cardigans, t-shirts, button shirts, skirts, pants, leggings, tights, shoes, boots . . . I don't have to create a whole new wardrobe just to accommodate this wool fever I seem to have contracted overnight. I can wear my dress by itself, but also with various top layers through season changes, as well as tucked into skirts, knotted or worn as a tunic over pants, even layered over a longer dress. I can wear it with bare legs, tights, or leggings, sandals or Converse or boots, or . . . I'm seeing the investment piece as a central element that will pull a lot of things together, in a way that I hope will be clarifying about what I will and won't need in the future.
Do I have an overthinking problem? Yeah, maybe. But now you have my overthoughts, and maybe they'll help you clarify something in your life without having to overthink it yourself.
In previous years I would have expended much of this energy in homeschool planning. Just saying.
I mean, on reflection, there is nothing wrong with this ensemble. The colors work. The shape is reasonably flattering. It's appropriate to the demands of the day. Yet it felt all wrong.
Too high-contrast? Too structured? Too sporty? Sneakers are definitely a stretch for me – I'm really and truly a sandals person – but I knew the river trail would be muddy, gravelly, and full of roots.
Looking back on these photos after a couple of hours (we're just back from the river trail, in fact), it's hard for me to see what felt so off. I don't think it's the navy tee, which I like. It was one of my last Walmart impulse buys, and like every single one of those buys, as these things go it was not a bad one: 100% cotton, good weight, soft, drapey. It really might just be shorts as a genre, though these aren't bad. The fit is about as flattering as I'm going to get in a pair of shorts.
BUT it all felt wrong enough that I changed clothes before I went out. Like, this person above looks okay, but she's not me.
What am me? Who is I?
I kept the sneaks, but . . . yeah, I like hiking in a dress. I kept the best color family out of the original outfit, but nixed the contrast. I went for drapey all over, fluid and soft and swingy.
I don't know that I made the more flattering choice. This photo my husband took of me in the woods suggests that I might entertain some doubts about that.
Caught at certain angles, a lady can look right wide in a swing dress. But I sure did feel better.
I begin to think it's possible that I could eliminate shorts altogether from my closet. I won't, not right away. But I do begin to think I could. On the other hand, some bike shorts for underneath a dress like this, for more serious vertical rock-scrambling hiking, would not go amiss. I do already have leggings, of course, and this morning was cool enough that I could have worn some, if I'd needed to.
More shots from our walk, starting with the old textile mill on the river, which is now a wedding venue:
Rock face with lichen along the trail:
Picking up the trail again after crossing the rural highway:
There's a waterfall, just barely visible, way back through those trees, but you can't get to it from here:
Looking around:
A deer did cross the path in front of us as we were heading back to the trailhead, but she moved too fast for me to photograph.
The road goes ever on . . .
. . . and on . . .
. . . and it keeps going even when you get to what's clearly marked as the end.
MID-AFTERNOON: Sent the final transcripts in. Hooray, hooray.
ALSO started spray-painting my outdoor couch yellow.
FRIDAY JUNE 25/FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
We're celebrating the feast in the first order by going to a funeral. We don't leave for another hour, but I wanted to get dressed, at least in part, before I had to cede the bathroom to the morning bather.
I'm wearing the tried-and-true thrifted Talbots fit-and-flare navy dress again. It is a good all-occasion dress, and flattering in cut, even though I need to wear a crop top underneath.
I will dress it up before we go with fisherman's-sandal wedges and a long cardigan, but I thought I'd demonstrate again how it plays as a casual dress:
I'm actually not sure what the fabric is – certainly not all natural fibers. It might not be any natural fibers at all. There's some spandex content, but that's in practically everything. It is a heavy, serviceable ponte knit that washes and wears well, although it is on the verge of becoming too worn and stretched out. It's still holding together pretty well, though, and I will wear it until it doesn't anymore.
Here I'm wearing the crop top turned around backwards, for a higher neckline, because church. Tan shoes for contrast.
I was attracted to Wool&'s fit-and-flare dresses for my 100-day dress, but as I've said before, they seem really not that well cut, to be as expensive as they are (though I really might at least ponder a Fiona instead of a Rowena as my reward dress). And as much as I reach for this dress – which I do quite often – it's hard to see styling it for a hundred days straight. I felt an A-line swing dress would provide more versatility, and of course that's a style I wear all the time, even if it's not quite as flattering a shape. All of that makes me glad to hang onto this dress as long as it lasts, however long that might be, even if I happily go a hundred days without reaching for it.
Here's the same dress, upscaled now for a funeral, with my thrifted fisherman's-sandal wedges and a boyfriend-length taupe thin cardigan (also thrifted):
Usually I wear this dress with my long-line blue marled cardigan, a fast-fashion Amazon purchase from back in January. Again: the kind of purchase I'm vowing not to make anymore, but I have gotten a lot of wear out of that cardigan, for the less than $10 I paid for it, and will continue to do so until it falls apart. Meanwhile, I tend to forget I have this cardigan, which I picked up at the Good Neighbor Shop for about a dollar some time back. It's also a synthetic, of course. But it drapes nicely, goes with lots of things, and is flattering. I think it makes a nice change here.
I guess it's weird to be talking about style for a funeral. But you know, Catholics go to a lot of funerals. Burying the dead is one of the Works of Mercy, and it's an occasion when we pull together solidly as a community, united in the hope of the resurrection. To be sure, I have been to my share of funerals, mostly not in Catholic churches, that have felt like dark-color fashion shows. I have been to Big Society funerals where I've felt shabby wearing thrifted outfits like the one I'm wearing today, compared with the people around me. Catholic funerals by and large, at least in our local parish, have not been that way at all, for which Deo gratias. At the same time, how we present ourselves is inescapably a sign of our regard for our neighbors – if we love them as we love ourselves, then we ought to signal that we respect ourselves enough to care how we dress. This then does become an outward figure for our respect for the other. I don't think that I'm just rationalizing away a fixation on clothing; I honestly believe this to be true.
I'd ruminate further, but it's time to go.
LATER:
Came home, put a third coat of spray paint on the outdoor-couch frame.
And as I was digging around in the closet to take stock of my shoes (because do I need to buy any more shoes for a long time? Not so sure I do, though I'd still like some oxfords, or else a pair of winter Birkenstocks . . . and my husband keeps suggesting I get cowboy boots, so that's yet another thought), I found these cute little Crocs Mary Janes I'd bought on Ebay, worn a few times in the spring, and then forgotten about.
They're a bit matchy to wear with anything else in this teal color, but I love them. I had stopped wearing them because they seemed loose in the heel – but I'd put insoles in them to correct that, and I think the insoles just made them feel more as though they were going to fall off. I put the insoles back in my Docs, which really do need them, and put on the Mary Janes without, and they're fine. I won't hike in them, probably, but they'll be great for basic wear. I'd had a pair of black Crocs Mary Janes which I wore and wore and wore for three or four years, then forgot in a hotel room when I was traveling several years ago, so I think I had just lost touch with the way these shoes fit. They're a fun pop with a navy dress here, and I think they'll be nice with my wool dress when it comes.
Now I want some mustard-yellow tights to go with my lapis dress and teal shoes . . . that's more vibrant color than I'm normally comfortable wearing, but that combo keeps occurring to me. Yellow tights, do, anyway. They'd be fun with a blue dress and camel boots, or a blue dress and my gray-green Docs, if I didn't want to be All Color Vibrancy Head to Toe.
Again, funny how all this anticipated minimalism makes me acquisitive-minded. But as I said yesterday, accessories like tights have always been the things I didn't get around to. Belts, too. I didn't even bother wearing belts until a couple of years ago. My thrifted thin tan belt has broken, so I'm anxious to replace it, because I wore it all the time. I'd like to get a really nice leather belt, but for now it'll probably be another thrift option.
Feeling really disinclined to do any actual work today, though I know I must.
SATURDAY JUNE 26
It's looking like a soft, cloudy day with a high in the mid-80s. Not much on, except that tonight we're taking our two homeschool high-school graduates out for a VERY nice dinner to celebrate. For that I think I'll probably wear my long linen Easter dress, probably with this duck-egg blue cardigan, knotted, as I wore it on Easter (but with fisherman's-sandal wedges, not boots):
Haven't worn this combo in a while, and I love that soft cardigan, the grayed, slightly green blue against the pink of the dress. And I love the dress itself. The 90s, with their garden-party dresses, could have gone on forever as far as I was concerned at the time. At any rate, it's nice to have the clothes back now. I like the grunge side, too. Didn't own Doc Martens at the time, but I own them now, and happy I am about it, too. Birkenstocks I did have, and I'm glad to have a pair again, though the Floridas I bought on Ebay are fast reaching their end (don't worry, they were cheap, and I knew what shape they were in). The straps are Birki, not leather, so I am considering whether it's worth it to have them resoled, though I do like them a lot. It would be better from the sustainability standpoint, certainly, to resole them. What else would I do with them but throw them away, unless I passed them along for somebody else to find at Goodwill and resole. I suppose I'd never throw away a pair of Birkenstocks, even if I didn't want them anymore, because unlike so many other brands in the same price range, they are renewable – laudably so.
In other news, what I'm reading at the moment (what Charlotte Mason calls Mother Culture):
*My "stiff book" (picked up and put down and read in bites): George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
*Novels: after mainlining the works of Anthony Trollope for months on end, I'm now mainlining (again) Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter mysteries. Have read Gaudy Night, and am currently on Have His Carcase. On my friend Janet's recommendation, I've recently read a couple of Ngaio Marsh Roderick Alleyn mysteries as well. Summer and mysteries seem to go together.
I don't really have a "moderately easy" book to go between the "stiff" book and the novels, unless you could all the poems I've been reading and rereading for the anthology project. Our submission deadline is next week, and I've just taken on one more essay to write . . . I'll be rereading my review of that poet's recent book to cannibalize for said essay, so I guess that's kind of moderately easy? Rereading myself? Not going to do it today, anyway. That's the kind of thing Mondays are for.
About to get ready for our morning walk, so I'll leave you for now with sun on the daisies, from yesterday when there was actually sun:
LATER: Here's the getting-dress process of the day:
I put on my Old Navy jumpsuit from last fall (see: purchases I'm not making anymore, above and elsewhere), with thrifted silver braided belt (so fetchingly held together at the end with electrical tape to keep it from unraveling – really need to cover that with silver tape), and blue EVA Birks. Day 2 hair (or 2.5, since I washed it Thursday night) combed out but not refreshed in any way. It's just big and there.
This jumpsuit is made of a synthetic quick-dry material, which is nice for travel because it doesn't wrinkle and you can hand-wash and drip-dry it easily overnight. It's very comfortable, but I have been curious to find out how it's going to perform in hot weather. Cut as it is, it seems like a hot-weather rather than a cold-weather piece. Especially as it originally came, with elastic in the waist , it worked pretty awkwardly with boots. I also didn't think it was that flattering and eventually took the elastic out. Of course then I ended up with something also not completely flattering. But I continue to like it better with a belt or a tied shirt far better than I ever liked it with the elastic.
I also love the color. Anyway, the fabric is – maybe not that surprisingly – less breathable in the heat than I would like. It was all right for a brisk 3-mile walk at 75F, but I probably wouldn't reach for it in triple-digit weather. On the other hand, especially if I leave it unbelted, it doesn't touch my body much, so that's a plus.
Before we went out, I twisted my hair up into a bun with a claw clip to get it off my neck and out of my way:
Really pretty happy with that move, which made me feel a lot more graceful and streamlined (reminder to pay attention to hair in the overall balance of what you have on).
I had to stop and re-twist and clip it midway through the walk, but it's held up fine since then. I'm happy to have left my hair long enough to do things like this.
Finally, I threw on a shirt over, but took it off and tied it around my waist while walking:
Again, I got a little too warm, but in general I like this jumpsuit with some kind of longer-line top layer. Even a denim shirt like this collarless one (thrifted) makes the whole presentation more polished, less "romper."
It's instructive for me to have taken pictures of all these outfits, incidentally, because in my head, and even just in the mirror, I'd be seeing far more of what I want to see, the image I already had in mind, and less of what the clothes on my body actually look like. The difference a belt makes, for example, is huge, but I'm not sure I'd see it if I didn't photograph it. It is the difference between something I'd feel weird and uncomfortable and uncertain wearing, and something I know looks okay, every time.
Would I buy this jumpsuit again? Well, given my current no-fast-fashion vow, no, I would not. Am I sorry I bought it? Not really. I don't know how long I'll wear it, but I will get wear out of it, enough to justify the sale price. I don't know how much I'll miss it during my 100-day dress challenge, whenever that starts, but I do know that I can wear it in the winter with layers and my Docs. I could, of course, wear the dress over it somehow as a top layer. I don't think that will be one of my immediate go-to choices, but I might try it, just to see how weird it feels. This color certainly plays well with blue.
Watching the boyo go off to karate – he's been doing one-on-one lessons with his instructor since mid-Covid, with the goal of achieving his black belt by the end of the summer, before he leaves for college. Go, Boyo, go.
Painted outdoor couch in situ:
Now I need to get around to repainting the chairs . . .
LATER:
Change of plans for dinner dress. Wasn't feeling this:
Knew I'd feel this:
Yep, same blue dress as yesterday and last night. Different cardigan, that's all (old thrifted duck-egg-blue Loft drape cardigan). Hair up in the same claw-clip do. More and more all I think I need is a flexible uniform and fewer choices. Anyway, I feel fine, and I'm looking forward to being out with my graduates, with whom I am well pleased.
Is this resting in gratitude? I hope so. I have a lot to be grateful for.