A place setting, just for nice.
Today's news: It came! It came!
What's this, you say?
And now it's here. I was home overnight from my fiction residency, to celebrate my son's birthday, and while I was there, voila.
This is the Wool& Camellia dress, in lapis, which I now intend to wear for a hundred days straight. Yes, really.
Here's how it looks on:
Here it is up close:
Yep, just chilling with the glassware, in my wool dress.
Later, in late-afternoon light, in the kitchen of the dorm studio I'm staying in for my residency:
It was a hot day today, though I'm not sure how hot. I went for a long walk around the campus with my rosary at 4 this afternoon, and though it was hot, I was comfortable in my Camellia dress. The merino is fine and thin, but not see-through, and it's quite light and cool. I'm still getting used to the feel of the fabric after so much cotton and microfiber – it certainly breathes well, and sweat evaporates away fast, but it's not as soft as I've been used to. Not itchy, though, and I imagine it will soften up with wearing.
The arrival of my Camellia obviously revises my residency capsule wardrobe plans quite a bit. Basically for the next hundred days, the wool dress IS my capsule. That does make things a lot simpler, though now I wish I could send half of what I brought with me home again. I did pack half my closet back into my backpack, leaving out what I could conceivably wear with this dress this week.
In the main, it's nice just to KNOW what I'm going to put on in the morning. I look forward to being a little creative with it, but I am also attracted to the idea of a basic uniform or habit, that I can just wear without having to think about what I'm wearing. I imagine that over the course of a hundred days, I'll do a good bit of both approaches. What I hope I will gain in the end is not only a slimmed-down, more functional and long-wearing wardrobe, but also some freedom from anxiety and self-consciousness.
Photo quality courtesy of my having lost my phone and being forced to resort to using the PhotoBooth app on my seven-year-old much-abused laptop.