It's Saturday. And you know what time that is.
Actually, we won't hit the mountains until this afternoon. My husband is going to a funeral this morning for the mother-in-law of a co-worker, while I need to do the week's grocery shopping, and now is the optimal time to do it. But once we're both back and have had some lunch, we'll hop in the car and head toward the Linville Gorge again, keeping an eye on the weather. Blowing Rock has rain in the forecast for the afternoon, but you never know what exactly that's going to mean, other than that you should pack raingear and a warmer layer, and be glad your leather boots shed water pretty well.
I like hiking in a dress. This dress performs well on the trail. It also can perform well as a top.
This is the one pair of thrifted shorts I haven't outboxed. They're Gap, nice and heavy but with some stretch. The length works for me –– the main reason I outboxed the others was that they were just too short, and also, despite being the same size, there was a lot of riding-up wedgie action happening whenever I sat down, not to mention some obvious thigh spreadage. I'm a little more comfortable with a little more coverage.
As always, blue and sage green are a favorite color combination. I had been thinking for a while that I'd like to try Camellia with these shorts, and I'm pleased with the effect, now that I've finally gotten around to it.
I tucked the dress pockets into the shorts waistband –– thank you, myriad people on Facebook who have suggested this bulk-reducing hack! Then I just knotted the length. I wanted to have some looseness and drape, to create a gentle v-angle from roughly the middle of my waist area over my hips. That's a more flattering line, always, than straight across, especially that low on the body when you do have hips and some stomach to deal with. The dress/top blouses a little in front, which helps cast my not-flat stomach into shadow.
As perhaps you can see here.
All in all, I like this silhouette. As much as I love my swing dress with its forgiving lines, I was craving a little more shape.
Knotting the dress does pull the already-generous arm-holes down more. I think if I had it to do again, I'd have ordered a small in this dress, though mostly the arm-holes have not been a problem. I wear camisole-style bralettes mostly, and even those usually don't show. This one –- actually my favorite one from TrueKind –- is the only one that ever shows, but it's also the most camisole-like, so I just figure it as an outfit element.
One more distanced shot. I always think these across-the-room views are revelatory, and have axed outfits I didn't like from a distance, even when they seemed okay in closer (more manipulated) shots.
Yeah, this is okay. I think the colors together are completely dreamy, so much so that I'm thinking of wearing Camellia tucked into my sage twill long skirt (looking kind of schlumpy, way back at the beginning, when I was still on my fiction residency) for Mass tomorrow. If I do, I will try not to look schlumpy.
This also makes me glad that I still haven't outboxed my 15-year-old sage-green cotton-sheeting drawstring wide-leg pants, bought at Target when we still lived in Memphis, and seen in this post from back in Eastertide. I hope they still fit. About the only time I haven't worn them was when my weight had reached almost 170, the heaviest I've ever been when I wasn't pregnant. It's inching up again, a little depressingly –- I mind mostly because the increase changes what clothes I can expect to wear, and how I can expect them to look on me –– but I'm nowhere near that yet. Anyway, if they do still fit and I like them with Camellia as a top, that gives me another transitional outfit for this warm fall weather, in a color combination I know I love.
Must grocerify now. Mountain pictures later, assuming we don't get washed out.
ONE MORE QUICKIE (more or less on my way out the door, in which I have thrown on a shirt for a top layer):
Just enjoying the colors, more than anything else.
LATER:
Scenes from a hike.
See all that sunshine?
Sun and shadows on the trail. But then . . .
Some North Carolina late-afternoon-mountain stuff started to happen.
I mean, some little bits of fall color were happening, too, but check out that sky.
I dislike wearing hats and hoods. But it was raining.
At last it started to rain less, so we continued to the summit.
This was hardly some kind of Everest moment –- we did not pass dead bodies on the way up, only groups of guys carrying babies in chest carriers, which was pretty sweet (I noticed that all the moms were hiking a lot more slowly, together, talking to each other, which also seemed just about right) –– but we were glad to get there. We also passed a little boy, hiking with his dad and brother, who told us that if we got to the top of the mountain, it would be almost like heaven. I suspect the weather might have been a little kinder to him than it was to us, but that's okay.
As you can see, I continued to wear Camellia knotted up with my shorts. When we got down to the car again, I unknotted the dress, slid off the very wet shorts, and turned on the car heater to dry myself between the trailhead and the Alehouse in Blowing Rock. It worked; I was perfectly dry by the time I was drinking my Scotch Ale.
Good time had by all. I was going to wash Camellia tonight, but now it's late and I can't be bothered. I'll hang her to air, then wear her again tomorrow, because that is how we roll.