Chilly and bright, the best November weather, especially when your heating system functions. Lots of work to do before I leave town, though I hope to snap a quick shot of my travel capsule for the weekend sometime today.
Wearing:
I think the challenge I'm giving myself, insofar as I'd even call it a challenge, is to rotate my clothes and wear them all. I could so easily have gotten up and thrown on my Audrey dress again. Instead, today I've reached for Fiona. Actually, I've reached for two dresses at once: my Fiona, which is fairly thin, layered over my good old Camellia dress, also fairly thin:
Last week sometime I wore Camellia as a shift/slip under my Maggie dress for warmth. That was okay, and it did keep me warm. But I really like the royal blue under the teal today. I was quite toasty at the dog park, with my puffer jacket and wool scarf, especially as I'm also wearing merino tights under these thrifted bamboo/cotton leggings. All of this might actually be a bit much, but at least I wasn't cold. And now that I'm home, I can turn the heat down.
I also like that my Tari boots fit well enough that I don't have to put on thick socks to keep them from being too loose on my feet. This adds immeasurably to my comfort in walking --- though there is room to put on another layer of socks when it's really cold. Today, with just merino tights inside my boots, I was fine.
All of this makes me feel both comfortable and kind of fun. And it is nice to have some more variety in both color and shape, even if the color variety is just moving up and down the same basic scale. As much as I can easily wear the same look day in and day out --- and I really love that look --- I'm appreciating a little more range in my limited rota of options. Much not many really is how it feels.
I am debating whether I even want to hang onto my one remaining pair of long trousers: thrifted royal-blue Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. I love the color, and I think they fit (that's how long it's been since I put them on), and I'm not ready to let go of them yet, but I am beginning to wonder why I hang onto them. It's not clear yet whether they fall into the category of things I'm glad I have to wear on the one or two days a year when I really feel like wearing them, OR the category of things I realize that I have to force myself to wear, ever, which means I don't actually like wearing them and should not continue to own them.
Only time will tell, I guess.
To work.
LATER:
Here's my little travel capsule for the weekend. It's potentially a lot of outfits. If I were seriously traveling for longer, I could get great mileage out of these pieces, I think. I really love the array of colors together, which I think is the key to a good capsule: not that it has to be monochromatic or matched, but that the colors should harmonize, so that you could start to imagine things going together, even when you hadn't considered that they might.
Even my rose-pink merino tee and my redyed red cardigan look a lot more harmonious next to each other than I had imagined. I'm not sure I'd really wear that orchid/pale grape/whatever you want to call it linen scarf with the red cardi, but they sure don't clash as much as I had assumed they would.
ALSO:
My husband has declared a pub and food-truck night. A quick tweak for steppin' out:
I was already wearing the navy merino tights under my leggings. On with the scarf and the drape cardigan, which I haven't worn in a while, et voila. Also a little change in the hair, from ponytail to half-updo.
People don't really dress up to go to our neighborhood pub, but I'll take any excuse I can get.