I had to go upstairs late last night for something, and I took this photo of myself in the office-door mirror. I'm officially haunting my own house.
Last night, cooking dinner, I was messing around and took some shots of the kitchen that I don't normally take --- the wall by the back door is fairly grungy, since it's where the trashcan lives, and it's usually sort of a mess. But I'd taken out the recycling and done the kitchen laundry (kitchen towels, napkins, tablecloths) --- those two aqua colored bins by the trash --- and in the evening lamplight, what usually strikes me as a mess looked kind of pretty.
Here are the remains of our happy-hour snacks, too:
Living it up with rye crisps and hummus (and non-alcoholic beer for me). That closed door across the hall is our back den, where Dora was incarcerated in her crate, to keep her from eating the hummus, not to mention our dinner. She has an easier time of it if we close the door, because that seems to signal to her that she's supposed to take a nap and isn't missing out on anything.
Dinner was spicy chicken drumsticks, broccoli with cheese, and quinoa, of which I made enough to have some to put in other things this week. I know many people dislike quinoa, but we like it and eat quite a bit of it.
Today I'm going to walk the dog, then go to Mass. After Mass, our plan is to drive up to Blowing Rock, where the weather report says it's going to be in the 30s Farenheit and raining, so not much hiking, I don't think. We still plan to bring Dora with us --- she might as well sleep in her crate in the car as in her crate at home, alone. At least we can stop to let her get out to pee and stretch her legs, which would not be the case if we left her.
So my clothing plan for the day is: WARM. I'll put something on for Mass with the idea of layering up more before we head for the mountains. To that end . . .
. . . I'm repeating a lot of yesterday's outfit, because it's a warm combination. Same Icebreaker base-layer merino shirt under my Wool& Sierra, the absolute coziest of my dresses. I've switched out the bamboo leggings for these charcoal merino tights, but when I get home from Mass, I want to layer the leggings back over the tights for warmth. I might or might not keep on this cardigan, my redyed thrifted Talbots cotton cardigan. I love how it dresses up the basic Sierra for church, but I will probably want a warmer top layer, at least to throw on for getting out of the car in the mountains. No bad weather, only the wrong clothes, right? I want to be wearing the right clothes, even if I'm not outside nearly as much as I had anticipated. I'll probably take my clumsily-me-made wool scarf, because is IS warm. But I won't wear that to church.
I haven't worn this cardigan all month, I don't think --- no, wait, looking at my album, I see that I wore it the day we put the children on the plane to Rome. But otherwise I haven't, so I'm glad I got it out today. I love it. That is the thing about having a lot of cardigans: no one cardigan gets intensive daily wear, though I can certainly see which ones I wear most frequently.
This I do not think is a bad thing. There's nothing like a different cardigan for changing up a basic outfit entirely. Having cardigans of different shapes, weights, knits/crochets, colors, and styles means that you have at your disposal a virtually infinite number of ways to style one dress. This Sierra is a good example. Look how the same base outfit looked yesterday (including the same shoes). And look how just the addition of this cardigan begins to change the whole look. I love the swingy cutaway shape, and the way it creates an inverted vee, starting around my sternum, in the shape of my dress, like a more defining A-line within the larger A-line. This, with the cropped length, gives the very basic line of the dress more flattering definition, I think. And the pop of red (pink enough that it doesn't clash too much with my pink base-layer tee) revvs it up a lot. I could completely transform my look simply by rotating through my cardigans, while otherwise wearing the exact same thing.
Anyway, given how easy it is to come by good cardigans at good secondhand prices, this is one area where I think it pays to be [eta: at least a little] maximalist, particularly if you live in an area with any cold weather at all. Of course, I guess if I lived in Florida, cardigans would be all my outerwear. As it is, living in North Carolina, where we have hot weather and mild winters, I still wear cardigans three seasons of the year, handily --- really four seasons, since I wear cardigans to Mass in the summer, and anywhere there's air conditioning. I have been carefully culling out cardigans that truly don't serve me, but honestly, most of my cardigans do serve me very well, each in its way. And the fact that I don't wear any given one that heavily means that they'll continue to serve me for years to come. These are my cardigan thoughts.
My new Willow dress is supposed to come tomorrow, and I await her arrival anxiously. Of course my mind turns to other dresses, though I don't really need any more dresses . . . I am thinking ahead to next fall and the possibility of adding one of the heavier dresses, the Margo or the Evelyn (depending on what's available six or seven months from now), for next winter. OR the possibility of another Sierra, with maybe a long-sleeved tee to match the color to make a "long-sleeved dress" when I want one. We shall see . . . This is just thinking, not planning. But dressing for a potentially cold, wet afternoon does start me pondering how nice a whole dress in this Sierra fabric would be for just such an afternoon. But then there are ten or twenty other things that would be nice, and I know I'm not going to buy ten or twenty other things, so I have to let these thoughts sit and percolate until something becomes clear. Not that these are my most pressing thoughts, though reading this blog I guess you'd get the idea that they were. I'm just not banging on about prosody in this particular space --- this is the closet space, so to speak. In fact, that would have been a good name for this blog, and maybe when I turn sixty I'll change it, since "The Ess Years" won't be as funny as "The Eff Years."
But I've got a year and about nine months to think about that. Now it's time to walk the dog.
MUCH LATER:
Back from our day in the mountains, which was indeed cold and wet. I was toasty, however, in my woolly ensemble. I had taken off the cardigan, and never did put anything on over it, other than my puffer jacket, but that was enough. I did put on yesterday's bamboo leggings over my tights, and that was enough, too.
NOTE: We went to the Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, which was fun but kind of overwhelming. I just really. do. not. enjoy. stores. The thing that really struck me, though, was that in days past, I would have been yearning after the outdoor-ish clothes . . . but this time I wasn't. There was one cotton tee in a luscious cobalt blue that I kind of had a wistful exchange with, but otherwise, I did not see one thing that was as good for me as what I was wearing. They do have Darn Tough Socks and Smartwool socks, but I thought: I don't need to buy these things here. I can go home and think about them and order them online if I decide I really want them.
One thing I DID see, though, was a pair of Birkenstock hiking boots. Leather. Like a better version of my 30-year-old Vasque boots that need retiring because they hurt my feet too much to hike in. I am going to stalk down these boots on Ebay and buy them for cheaper than the Mast Store sale price of $164. This is my vow. I'm not in a no-buy year, I can do whatever I want with impunity, and THIS is what I'm going to do. And then I hope I'm going to wear them for the next 30 years.