Rain and chill, bless the Lord.
Even when you know the good weather can't last, it's still peculiarly a bummer when it doesn't.
Not much on today---waiting to see if the rain will let up before walking the dog. I'll probably do that first, then wash my hair for Sunday. You know it's a big day when "wash my hair" gets on the public agenda. Then work on finishing my reader's notes for my MFA student, since I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about them. I am bombarding this poor writer with recommendations which I hope don't come across as negative. I can see a good little novel through the weeds of the current draft --- not Dostoevsky, but then the writer herself says it's meant to be a light novel. The current draft is really weedy, but the story is there under it all.
Wearing today:
Dog park edition. Here's the actual outfit, made more visible:
It ought to be obvious to anyone that I am not a dancer, but I did take ballet at school all through elementary school. Here I do kind of a 5th-position arm situation, while holding a phone. I am not doing any kind of ballet position situation with my feet.
Here's more like an Irish-dance situation, although I'm not glowering nearly enough.
Also kind of an Irish-dance situation, although Irish dancers don't put their hands in their pockets. It's wearers of Wool& dresses who habitually do that. But this position, which Irish dancers take up preparatory to beginning a dance, happens to be a nice way to stand for a selfie. It makes you align your posture, and it positions your body so that while you are facing head-on into the camera (or in this case, the mirror), you're not presenting your whole width as a flat surface to the eye. It just seems like an intrinsically flattering way to position yourself, which is why I do it. I do naturally stand this way a lot, but I consciously stand this way for these photos. And . . . you know, if that's self-curation, so be it. So much of appearing in photographs does depend, as we all know, on things like angle and posture, and there's no more virtue in taking unflattering photos of yourself than there is in taking flattering ones. Flattering photos aren't any less you than unflattering ones are. In any case, not all of these are great photos of me, but you can see my clothes to pretty good effect, which is what I intended.
Anyway, in all these situations, as you can plainly see, I'm wearing my Wool& Sierra, nice and cozy, with thrifted Talbots plum merino blazer-cardigan, also nice and cozy. I haven't worn this cardigan in a while, so it was nice to get it out today for a walk in the misty rain. Oldish purple synthetic leggings --- also surprisingly cozy, even though when you're in the wool cult you're not supposed to think things like that. Old ragg wool socks originally belonging to my son, thrifted Birk hiking boots, which are perfect for rainy-day wear, not least because they spare all my other shoes the abuse.
Temps on my walk were a very damp 49-ish Farenheit, but I was quite warm, almost too warm, in these basic layers. It's gray and cool and dreary out right now --- in fact, the forecast for tomorrow on my weather app is literally "dreary" --- but of course the signs of spring are still everywhere. I think we're supposed to hate all these pear trees that bloom in the woods in late February, because they're apparently invasive Bradford pears, but still . . .
Pear blossom is kind of lovely. This might not actually be Bradford pear, which smells like decomposition. I didn't notice a particular aroma of death pervading the air at the dog park. There are other species of pear, and they all bloom early in the spring. Maybe I don't have to hate this one, which I did think was all petals on a wet black bough.
At any rate, Dora and I were out for about an hour in the morning, in the rain. We saw a groundhog on the way home, which was a near occasion of sin for Dora, but we got past it, and she is amending her life now on the study couch. My husband is out for the afternoon, so we're just lazing about, and I'm finishing off these reader's notes for my MFA student. The quiet house is lovely and peaceful. I might actually look at my own little novel project, which has been languishing for the last month. I've been thinking about it, but have not had the mental bandwidth to approach it.
Meanwhile, I have done a thing that I did not really mean to do (stop me, stop me). I have bought a skirt. To wit: I have pre-ordered this skirt in this color.
Why? Well, there was the pre-order discount, for one thing (these skirts are set to ship April 28). There was also the niggling question of whether or not I was going to buy one more dress for the summer. I'd already decided I wasn't going to bother buying an Easter dress, but simply wear something I already own, which is all fine. But I've still been entertaining the idea of one more dress, sometime this year.
There was also the fact that I'd bought a skirt and wound up reselling it on Poshmark, and tried another merino skirt from Duckworth, which I returned. One skirt didn't fit at all, and the other didn't look at all the way I'd envisioned, and I knew I wouldn't wear it. I'd bought these skirts because I thought each of them would go well with the merino tanks I had bought on Poshmark, which I've worn as base layers in cold weather, but which are so cute that I'd really like to wear them as tanks all summer. One of them goes with the three skirts I currently own. The other does not. Meanwhile, I have a number of other shirts that I like and have kept because I like them. I do wear them with my dresses . . . but sometimes it's kind of a struggle to wear them with my dresses. While I'm not a fan of separates outfits, still I have these, and I like them . . . Anyway, I'd been actively looking for some kind of skirt, preferably merino to keep the wool-all-year thing going, but had not found one that fit well or worked the way I'd envisioned.
So it came to me that this "Pacific" color would go with literally everything in my closet. I don't know how good it would look next to my face, but it will go with everything I own except possibly my moss-green blazer (which already goes with most things, so that's okay). It's a maxi-length skirt in an A-line shape, which seems versatile and comfortable and likely to fit flatteringly. Most appealingly to me, I could wear it all summer with this pink merino Eileen Fisher tank and this teal vintage-90s merino/cashmere/silk tank, which had been great secondhand finds, and which have served as great winter layers, but which have kind of been hanging out in my closet waiting for me to put them together with something.
I can wear this coming skirt for the summer literary thing I'm going to in Houston --- pair it with one of those tanks and a cardigan for indoors, plus sandals, and I'm good to go. The dark tealy green is a color I'd still be wearing with boots and cardigans at Christmas. I also like that it's one more hemline that's not above my knees. I love my shorter dresses, but I also really like having maxi options. I love my Willow, for example, but she's pretty darn short. I'm also jazzed about having a longer skirt that will travel well. As much as I love my linen and rayon skirts (all thrifted), they are NOT great travel candidates. They all wrinkle and need ironing,
Anyway, I got an email about it, and I bought it. It won't come till well after Easter, and I guess if I really felt bad about it, I could cancel my order anytime. But it does fill a particular place in my wardrobe, and I think in a lot of ways it might serve me better than another dress. I'd been wishing that they'd offer this skirt style in something like marine blue --- I like the style better than the pencil skirt, for example. And I'm not that jazzed by the wrap skirt, because denim just doesn't seem as versatile to me. So I had been eyeing this style but thinking none of the available colors were for me --- until I took a second look at the Pacific and started thinking: pink tops, teal tops, blue tops, lighter aqua tops, gray tops . . . all these tops I still have that have needed something to pair them with, and this goes with all of them . . . .
They're kind of all smashed together here. I should take a better shirts photo. But this skirt really does solve the look at all these merino tees I have, but I don't always feel like tying them over a dress problem, among other things. And the I'd really like to wear this blue linen shirt by itself, not over a dress conundrum. And the why do I still have this pale aqua J. Jill tiered tunic, when I don't really have much to wear with it anymore mystery.
So, I have until the end of April to think about it, and it won't disturb my Lent by arriving and being a dopamine hit. But I think it will be a great solution in my closet, and may possibly just do me for the rest of the year, as an all-season item.
I feel as though I've been very extravagant. Maybe I have. On the other hand, I've made money --- not a fortune, but more than I've made in a long time. I anticipate more income of my own in the coming months. So . . . I don't want to get carried away, but on the other hand, I'm glad I have hiking boots that fit, sandals and clogs that are comfortable to wear and walk in, and a whole wardrobe that gives me possibilities for a whole range of occasions without my having to wonder what to wear. It's not "what on earth do I wear," but "which of these things do I want to wear?" I have glasses that work for me, after going a long time without new glasses. All these things taken together feel like a lot, but on the other hand, they feel like either a) things I was going to buy anyway (like new glasses, because I can't really not wear glasses), or b) just a continuation, and maybe almost the culmination, of a process that began two years ago when I bought my first Wool& dress: to create a streamlined, versatile, high-quality natural-fiber wardrobe that works together without being a limiting capsule, and that I honestly enjoy wearing day to day. Nat Tucker says it takes two years to build the perfect wardrobe --- while I wouldn't call my wardrobe perfect, exactly, more and more it works for me, so that I look forward to getting dressed. For somebody for whom clothes were always a source of anxiety and insecurity, this is kind of amazing, every day.
These are the things I think about on a quiet, rainy day . . .
Just spent an hour talking to the little girly in Greece. Now it's time to turn my thoughts to dinner . . . the sun will go down, and it will be the Vigil of Sunday, and in Lent that's always such a blessed thing.