A treasure on the wall above my dining-room table: this watercolor my dad did, from a sketch on a trip to Rome. My dad was not remotely Catholic, and would not have been made happy by our Catholicism, but we do love this painting of his.
Feeling free and easy today because I've finished my Sun essays for next week: Hopkins, Swift, and a minor eighteenth-century comic poet named Mary Jones, who among other things was Oxford's postmistress at the time of her death in 1778. I'm currently reading a friend's anthology of Christian poetry from outside the English tradition, in translation, from the early Church to 1800. It's an amazingly impressive project, featuring translations by Victorian stars like John Mason Neale alongside contemporary translations by Rowan Williams and others, including the author himself. The anthology's title is To Heaven's Rim, and it will be out from Wipf and Stock, sometime early in the new year, I would imagine.
Good news: Christian Poetry in America Since 1940 is a finalist in the Art and Culture division of Christianity Today's annual book awards.
I've been out walking with Dora this morning, wearing my Doc Martens for a change, as an experiment. And --- I love my Docs, but the experiment confirmed what I already knew, which is that I don't enjoy walking any distance in them. The combination of their being too big in the heel and too narrow in the toe box with the stiffness of the sole: just not a winner. Like my tall camel boots, they're great for many occasions, but I'm reminded of why I did not reach for them on a daily basis last winter, unless I made myself.
Still, the look is fun:
Just to wear, they're quite comfortable with these thick bamboo "bed socks" from Boody, which I bought sometime around the first of the year. These socks are too thick to wear with my old Vasque hiking boots, but they fill up the extra space in the Docs just fine, without riding down.
This outfit just as it came felt a little too "nothing," so I added an extra detail to make it more interesting:
I actually --- wait for it --- crocheted this cotton scarf myself, in the summer of 1991. We had just moved to Salt Lake City, into a fifth-floor walkup in an old building with no air-conditioning, and we didn't know a soul. I forget what prompted me to buy yarn and a crochet hook, and I can't remember how I actually learned the stitch I used, because I had not known how to crochet before. Maybe I bought a book? No idea now. Anyway, this is what I spent the summer doing, sitting in front of a box fan in our sweltering living room. It took me weeks, and then when I was finished, I promptly forgot how to crochet. I didn't follow any kind of pattern, just made it up, but I have actually worn this thing a lot over the years.
It's a little warm even for a light layer like this, and I didn't wear it out walking, but it does add something to the otherwise plain ensemble of yesterday's bamboo swing dress (wearing it forward!) and boots.
Meanwhile, I have broken my no-buy again, or at least fast-forwarded to a buying window I'd already planned to take (thinking of this as an early birthday present to myself). For months now I have been looking at Xero Tari boots, largely for reasons my boot experiment today has confirmed: I really wanted something I could just put on easily over my merino tights and live in all day, including taking long dog walks. The other Xero shoes I own are all great in this regard, so I felt pretty confident that these boots were something I wanted --- though I did ask myself whether I might spend that money better in some other way, and just be happy with my Docs. Well, anyway, Xero always has a really good holiday sale, which is how I got both my Colorado sandals and my purple Oswegos last year, at significant discounts. I'm glad I went ahead and bought them, too, because Xero has discontinued both those styles.
So this year they're having their holiday sale: NOW. The Tari boots are marked down from $135, essentially, to under $70, just over half the original price. They've sold out of them before, so that people had to wait until midsummer if they wanted to buy them, and I don't know that they're not going to discontinue them altogether, because they seem to do that even when a style is popular. So I had to decide fast whether I still wanted them, or whether I was willing to let them go forever. I deliberated a little, but then I pulled the trigger. And honestly, I'm glad I did, because again, as much as I love my Docs, they are not what I want to walk in every day. What I do want is a cute boot that will go for walks as well as do everything else, because I just don't believe in having separate "walking shoes." And I don't want to find myself making really weird layered outfits with leggings and socks and Birkenstocks, just because I want to be warm and comfortable. I want to be warm and comfortable and not make weird outfits. This is my dream.
Anyway, once again, "no buy" does not turn out to mean precisely what it says, but I'm not sorry. Having bought the boots, I'll be a little more discerning about what dresses or other items I then want to buy around my birthday, but that's okay. I can't buy All The Things, but then I knew that. It's probably good that in another six weeks or so, Wool& will have sold out of some things, which will focus my choices there. Meanwhile, I can just sit on my desire for this, that, or the other thing, and see how much I still want any of those things when the time comes. I'd like to just hit "pause" in my brain, actually, on the whole wanting-things thing, so maybe I can focus on wanting that for a while.
ADDENDUM: I hadn't worn the Docs since March 27, apparently, though I did actually wear them a lot last winter, overall. At one point they were my most-worn shoes. I also note that today is the first time in months that I've worn socks.
I guess I'll carry this wear-it-forward through the weekend, to make seven days of it. Tomorrow we're going over to the neighborhood pub's Oktoberfest celebration, where they'll have their seasonal beer on tap (it's already in cans, and we've had some, and it's very good), and I'm thinking I'll wear my Maggie and repeat either the scarf or the Docs with it. Then I can wear Maggie to Mass on Sunday, and that'll be a wrap for that challenge.
I'm thinking about a new challenge, because challenges keep me from getting bored with what's in my closet. I like the idea of the Fall for Your Closet challenge going around on Instagram currently, which I haven't exactly been following --- here are the rules, day by day. The challenge was this week, so I've missed it, at least as an official thing to do. I also am not sure I necessarily care about these daily prompts so much. This is a pretty sports-free zone, for one thing. I don't even own sneakers anymore.
But I like the idea of creating outfits that a) read as fallish, and b) carry you forward from cool mornings to warm middays to cool evenings, without your having to change your entire look. Now, our mornings and evenings are cooler at this point. We've had some nights in the high 50s this week, which is a real weather trend-change. NOBODY's wearing boots and tights yet, though, not even at night. Well: maybe Docs or Chelsea boots with bare legs . . . that at least is a mood-shift from sandals. So maybe my own personal challenge could be to create daily outfits that don't make me too warm at the warmest part of the day, but still signal that mood shift in some way. Maybe the main thing would be to challenge myself not to wear sandals, and also to have a plan for an extra layer in the evenings, when it does cool off.
My eye, meanwhile, immediately gravitated to this image. I'm sure it's largely the colors, which are so. very. much. my colors --- but also, the autumnizing of a summery outfit, which I do a lot of. It made me think of my linen dress, which I keep planning to wear and then not wearing (it really is just too much for an ordinary day), but how much I enjoy adapting that very spring-summer vibe for colder weather. I find it especially refreshing in midwinter to wear that dress with a sweater and boots, but it wouldn't be hard to "fallify" even now: a cotton cardigan, Docs with socks and bare legs, and suddenly, though we're still not sweltering, we're also not quite at a garden party anymore. So something like that could be my next Mass look . . . maybe I'll change my mind about wearing-it-forward and just kick off a new week that way.
Evening/date-night update (still wearing it forward, with one more possible ingredient for tomorrow):
My feet, being spoiled by minimalist shoes, got really tired in those boots. Now I feel like a complete twinkletoes.