Still the webcam/PhotoBooth images.
Today I'm wearing Camellia as a top, under one of my favorite skirts, a thrifted heavy linen floral print with, as you can see, blue and green. The green is not one of my better greens, but since it's not next to my face, it works all right. I've always liked the swing and spring-feeling of this skirt, and I'm happy that it goes with Camellia, or she with it.
Here we are sans cardigan:
I'm also wearing thrifted Old Navy fisherman's-sandal wedges, bought back in the spring. I don't wear heels much, but I like these, and I like the little lift they give to the skirt. Feeling very late-50s, somehow, today. Maybe it's just the photo quality.
Pictured here as well with San Damiano crucifix, and a painting on wood panel done by my youngest daughter when she was about 8, using paint we had used to paint the house. It's a hard item to hang – I did have it secured to the kitchen wall with command strips, but secured is a term we're using loosely here, so to speak. It kept falling off. I haven't had time to figure out another solution, so for now it lives right there, propped against the little strip of wall by the fridge, overseen by Our Lord as He appeared to Saint Francis and exhorted him to rebuild the church.
The cardigan is a thrift item, bought in a 4-for-$1 deal at the Good Neighbor Shop. It's a Loft piece and very soft, pretty much all cotton, I think. It's light enough to wear fairly comfortably even in the summer heat. I'm not sure I could wear this green, either, right next to my face –– there are greens I look good in, but it's tricky –– BUT it plays beautifully with the blues I know I can wear well.
Here we are in a close-up:
It's good to be back in my familiar kitchen, back among my glassware, in my seat at the kitchen table where EVERYTHING gets done. I might have finished my novel, more or less, in two weeks in a dorm room on a college campus, but I really wrote it right here.
And now I've had an offer: the book is set to appear in Wiseblood Books' 2022 catalog. That's a look of satisfaction on my face.
Off to Mass shortly, where I plan to give thanks for all that the Lord has done for me.
NOTE: I'm having to correct the lighting some in these images, which means that I am using filters. But I'm not doing anything really to correct my face in any way. AND I'm not wearing any makeup. My aim is always to choose colors that bring my face to life: my skin, my eyes, all my coloring. If my color choices do that, rather than draining me (as, for example, black always does), then I don't need makeup. This is my face, just as it comes, with no artifice –– that's always been important to me. I don't want to come as a shock to anybody over the breakfast table. But I don't sabotage myself, either. I make my life easier by choosing good colors, so that I can just dress and go and look as good as it is really possible for me to look. In fact, today I got dressed in five minutes and, as usual, am sitting here waiting for everybody else.
LATER: Camellia with skirt (not shown) and apron, while cooking dinner:
PS: I did wash Camellia by hand on Saturday night, in cold water and a dollop of sulfate-free shampoo, because that's what I had on hand. Rolled her in a towel for about 20 minutes, then laid her over the top of my drying rack in the bathroom. She was dry by morning, fresh and ready to go for another week.