Zinnias and mandevilla for the feast day.
Going to Mass this morning at the Abbey, then to lunch with a friend, then to pick up some groceries for a celebratory meal tonight with the family --- our last Monday with the college kids! It's hard to believe how fast the summer is slipping away. Soon enough the hummingbirds which love these flowers will have gone south, and the zinnias will go to seed for the last time. The mandevilla will come indoors for the winter. Nothing gold, or red, or anything else, can stay. This world is not anything's home, not forever, which in a way is the import of today's solemnity, an echo of the Ascension months ago. He came to redeem the world to Himself, not Himself to the world. Nothing gold can stay.
On that cheery note, it's time to get dressed and take the dog out. I'm feeling very much like last year right now, getting up and putting on the same dress, over and over --- nothing in the world could be easier!
Walk attire:
Mass attire (a very quick tweak, with a thrifted cardigan and slightly nicer shoes):
A happy solemnity to all!
LATER:
Mass attended, lunch enjoyed, grocery shopping done, dinner eaten.
After talking so much yesterday about what I do and don't buy into in the "seasonal" approach to coloring and clothing color choices, I am finding palettes like this one quite helpful as I think about the clothes I already wear and the options before me for items I might add to my wardrobe in the future. Again, I think I really don't care about "cool" and "warm," and I would not limit myself to just these colors, especially for things like shoes that aren't close to my face and can therefore add a contrasting frame to an outfit.
In a lot of ways, this particular grid doesn't tell me much that I don't already know. I already wear many of these colors regularly and know I look good in them, especially the blues. What it does confirm for me is that I'm not wrong to cast my eye at, for example, ocean teal options in Wool& dresses, like this one. It also gives me a helpful range of purples --- I'd like to hang onto this link, because when I'm looking at dress options, I can compare with the shades offered here to find one that really looks good on me. I've chosen pale lavenders before that did nothing for me, which came as a surprise, because they were grayed and muted and I thought they'd work --- but they didn't. Really bright purples: also not great. OK, but a little much for my level of contrast. This grid confirms that I can, on the other hand, wear either pinky, grapey purples and orchids, OR really blue purples, OR fairly gray-based purples as long as they aren't too washed out. Marionberry might really work for me, for example, as a Wool& shade, if it's ever not all sold out. I wasn't sure about that shade, but I think it would be good.
Anyway, I mostly just wanted to link to that page so I didn't lose it. It's useful to have a guide. I'll probably make myself a sidebar link list of these pages, because the palettes are all a little different --- some include browns, for example, while others don't. This one doesn't have a lot of gray, and I do wear gray well. The upshot of it all is that eventually I will be buying more dresses, and I really don't want to have to send them back. I'd like to get both the size and the color right --- though I realize that there's often a discrepancy between how something looks on the screen and how it looks in real life, and you can't always tell, ordering online, what color EXACTLY you're getting, or how it's actually going to look on you.
Also looking harder at some things I've been holding onto, because they're objectively nice things, but I'm less and less convinced that they're doing anything for me, colorwise (looking at you AGAIN, dark-brown cardigans . . . ).
ANOTHER THOUGHT: Could I re-dye those dark-brown cardigans? Could they be, say, burgundy? Or navy? (they'd still have brown buttons unless I replaced those, but I COULD replace those . . . ). Do I have to outbox them, when I like their shapes and styles? COULD I simply change what color they are? What if I stripped out the color, and made one of them . . . dark rose? And one of them blue? What if . . .
Still excited about my redyed Camellia, meanwhile. I'm grateful to have her back in action, looking so nice!