And now for something completely different.
My closet and I are having a joyful little reunion this week, while my 100-day dress enjoys a well-deserved rest. Unlike a lot of people on completing this challenge, I did not wake up today and think, "I must wear wool!" I mean, I like wearing wool. Verily it is a fiber much to be desired. I look forward to receiving and wearing my reward dress, as well as continuing to wear my challenge dress, which I do still like.
But I'd be lying if I said I hadn't cast a longing eye at the rest of my wardrobe, especially in recent weeks as the season has changed. I've had things hanging in the closet that I would undoubtedly have been reaching for in this warm, mellow fall weather, had I not been reaching for my wool dress as a daily default.
I'd thought I'd put on one of my two new bamboo-fiber dresses this morning. Both of these are recent Ebay purchases, and I have been eagerly awaiting the end of my wool-dress challenge to wear them. They are marvelously soft, light, breathable, and temperature-regulating –– I wore one with my Camellia as an extra layer after hiking one day last week, so I can attest to that last bit. The colors, blue and burgundy, hit my autumnal sweet spot; they're both long-sleeved, so I can wear them alone without feeling either too summery or too hot. Without a doubt, I will wear them both this week.
But today my eye fell on this jumpsuit instead, a fast-fashion clearance purchase from last fall (of the sort I am committed to not making any more, but now I have it . . . ). I'd been wanting a jumpsuit for a long time, but hadn't ever seen one that looked right for me. I'd looked at millions of linen ones, because I love linen –– and in fact, I'd still love a pair of those linen wide-leg Japanese overalls –– but then I came across this item, on the Old Navy sale page. It isn't linen, but some weird kind of quick-dry travel fabric, which I found hot and not that breathable at the height of the summer, when I'd envisioned wearing it a lot, but it is soft and fluid and comfortable when the weather's not so hot.
It originally had an elasticized waist, which I never liked. The elastic made the top blousy, which I wouldn't have thought I'd mind, but it also pulled the legs up so that they hit at an unflattering place on my calf and were hard to wear with anything but sandals. Oddly, too, the waist made me look more pear-shaped, not less. My top half in the blousy (but maybe not blousy enough) bit above the waist still looked small, while the fullness that the elastic generated over my hips made that part of me look that much wider by contrast. I experimented with the jumpsuit some –– various cardigans, jackets, etc. –– but didn't really like wearing it until I finally got up the nerve to cut the elastic and pull it out.
Now what I have is . . . maybe not any more flattering than what I had before, to be honest. If you look closely, you'll see that it does now have a dropped-waist thing going on, and maybe that's weird, but on the other hand, it also falls in a longer line than it did before. It's more like a maxi dress that happens to be split into trousers, and whether it's objectively any more attractive or not, I like it better.
I have always liked the color and felt reliably good in it. It seems to pick up my own coloring really well, or vice versa. I think this color was listed as something like "berry," but I've never seen any berry quite like it. It's closest to what Nat Tucker defines as "rose-brown," in her Brilliant Colour Combinations e-book (not an affiliate link). Here is the rose-brown page from that e-book, as rendered on my laptop screen:
You can see here all the things she says go with rose-brown. I don't necessarily limit myself to the combinations the book proposes, and I don't necessarily wear them all, either. But it helps to have some ideas. I don't own anything in chartreuse, for example, but I have any number of blue things, any number of pink things, any number of grays, whites and off-whites, sage green, and teal. There are a lot of outfits I can make with this one core piece of clothing.
It's great for travel, I have to say. While it lacks the thermal qualities of wool or bamboo, it still packs down easily without wrinkling, and depending on how it's accessorized, can be worn in a variety of situations. I've worn it on the plane, because it's so soft and unrestricting (I am not, again unlike a lot of people, apparently, all that bothered by having to pull the whole thing off in the restroom). It was one of three core pieces in a tiny travel capsule I made last spring, when I was flying one way then driving back and didn't want to have to check a bag. That was a five-day trip from start to finish, but I didn't come close to exhausting the outfit possibilities I had packed in the little bag which my husband normally uses to hold all his supplements and toiletries when he travels. I've worn it belted and unbelted (one distinct advantage of having pulled the elastic out), with cardigans, a jean jacket, knotted shirts over, t-shirts under.
I was going to wear a cardigan with it today, but then I remembered this thrifted denim shirt, which I haven't worn much in the last few months, because it didn't look all that sharp with my lapis blue Camellia challenge dress.
I don't wear this shirt that often as a shirt –– I really like it as a soft jacket layer over something else. Sometimes I wear it unbuttoned. Sometimes I wear it partially buttoned.
But I really like it knotted with this jumpsuit.
Gives me a defined waist without a belt, plus the right weight for an extra layer when the temperatures are going to reach the mid-70s Farenheit.
I have liked this jumpsuit with sandals, rather than boots –– I should try it with my Chinese Mary-Jane shoes as well, because that would probably be fun, but in general it's been sort of strange: too warm for the best sandal weather, but not good with colder-weather shoes, until now. My thrifted Birk Madeiras provide what feels like the right shape, without being an open-toed sandal, for a more fallish look.
Anyway, again: something completely different. It's nice to remember that I can do different things.
On the agenda for the day:
*Revisit the copy-editing. I've been through the whole book once, but now that I've finished it, I need to go back and consider my editorial comments again.
*Change the bed, wash the sheets and other laundry. I like to do a big load to start the week –– usually I wash again on Friday. I hand-wash a lot of my own things, but kitchen linens and various other things tend to accumulate in the course of the week, and then again over the weekend.
*Exercise –– I still have some garden things to do, which would get me outside and moving.
*Touch my own fiction writing, which has taken something of a back seat this month as I've been focused on editing and paid writing jobs. Or poetry. I have been combing over my new manuscript and doing a lot of spot revising. It's been a while since I wrote anything completely new, which can feel unsettling (will I ever write anything again?) –– but it's a universal phenomenon, and I know I will write new things when they're ready to be written.