Our Lady Above the Kitchen Sink.
Coming back from my walk with Dora yesterday, I took this picture of our house:
The little redbud in front is finally big enough, in its fifth summer, to look like a tree and not like a weird extension of the forsythias along the curb. I wish I'd planted it a little farther back in the yard, but oh well. In another year or two it'll be tall enough not to obscure the house quite so much, just be a lovely shape in front of the upstairs dormers. I need to prune the forsythia a little in front, to even out the height a little (but I don't want it to look all sheared off, or pruned into a ball), and to give the daylilies in front of it room to breathe.
When I consider that five years ago in August, our front yard was a mud flat after the big oak tree came down, all these growing things seem like a miracle. It was a wasteland.
None of what's currently growing in front of the house was there (well, except that big acuba on the lefthand corner of the porch. Those things are from the foundation of the world, and nothing will ever kill them). I planted the forsythias along the curb --- all of them transplanted from various other places where I have forsythias --- mostly to keep the topsoil from washing completely off the yard and down the street. I also frankly like the privacy screen. What we lose in curb appeal this way, we gain in a little separation from the community college across from us. If it all starts to feel like a little much, I can prune the forsythia way down and still have at least a visual divider in place.
If the front borders are a crowded mess (and they are), I will take that over the previous situation, any day. I also truly don't miss the tree, which was not a pretty tree, just big. It's so much nicer to have this much sun, so that things can grow. I feel the same way about my garden in back. I love trees, but they live their natural lifespan, and even though that lifespan may encompass many human generations, eventually they do die --- and it's not the end of the world. You lose the tree, but you gain something else.
It's a soft, cloudy day right now, but the high is supposed to be 86. Sumer is icumen in. My agenda today is more or less a repeat of yesterday. Trying to knock this work out --- so that more can come along, because that's how it goes, but I do want to get this thesis back to its author so that she can make revisions before her defense, whenever exactly that is. I want to read some more of The Making of Poetry, too.
In clothing news, I'm still overjoyed to have received my teal Maggie dress yesterday, two days ahead of her scheduled arrival. This is a fantastic dress, and I could write my whole review from yesterday over and over again. This brings my number of wool dresses to 7, with one cotton dress (my purple Pact sheath dress) retrieved from the outbox and returned to active wear to make an 8th.
This isn't bad, really. It gives me a week-plus-one rotation --- more, if I choose to wear a skirt with a shirt instead of a dress-as-shirt, but generally I don't do that. I can choose to wear a dress multiple days in a row, or multiple times in a week, but I don't have to, and in fact I think it's good for me, in terms of mental health, to have to cycle through different clothes, so that I don't get bogged down in acedia. Keeping a spreadsheet helps me to be aware of my wearing patterns, while giving each dress at least a little rest between wears helps them all last longer. Having a rotation of a week, or even two, seems useful this way. I think if I had more than two weeks' worth of dresses, or even a week and a half's, things would start to get neglected, and I would start to be overwhelmed, but what I have now seems pretty perfect.
So as tempted as I am just to put on that new dress again today, as a default, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to let her rest and bring somebody else out to play. But who?
Continuing my blue theme for May, which is to say: continuing to wear the clothes I wear every day, all the time, regardless:
Still feeling teal, which in my book is blue, unless it's an especially green-leaning teal, which this isn't. It's closer to a sky blue than anything else. Anyway, here's Fiona, such a nice little dress to throw on with a pair of sandals. I'm continuing to test just how well 3/4 sleeves stand up to warm weather, and also trying to get as much wear out of these longer-sleeved dresses as I can before it really is too hot to contemplate them on an everyday basis. I imagine I'll continue to wear them to church, anyway, where I'd otherwise be putting on a cardigan, even at the height of the summer. Might as well just wear one layer and have done with it, I think. But in the meantime, I want to enjoy them as much as possible while the weather permits.
I'm also trying to analyze why this dress works for me, when Sofia did not. They're quite similar dresses, constructed on much the same lines, with an elastic waist and a lot of flow. I'm no seamstress, so my understanding of how dress patterns and designs work is limited, but it does seem to me that bodices are tricky, and they're maybe even trickier if you don't have sleeves. The way the upper portion of this dress more or less flows into sleeves (they're set in, not raglan sleeves, but still, I hope you know what I mean) obviates any problem with armholes. It might be too wide across my bust, for example, but the sleeves kind of cover any weirdness. I also think that the scoop neck makes this dress feel a lot more graceful and less schlumpy on me than the Sofia was. The Fiona's skirt also has more fullness, which helps if you carry most of your weight at the bottom of your torso. I could size down in this dress for a possibly better fit in the bodice, but I could not have sized down in the Sofia, because the skirt would have been too tight.
This dress, meanwhile, is kind of a plain, ordinary little dress that slips on and just . . . maybe doesn't do anything spectacular, but doesn't do anything egregiously awful either. It's just nice, a cute, fun dress that doesn't get nearly enough love in the Wool& community --- I think because when people think "fit-and-flare," they envision something that fits quite differently, and in a more structured way, from this dress. I'm always reminded of a couple of formal dresses my mother made me in high school, in 1980-ish: both from a very basic sundress pattern with spaghetti straps and an elastic waist, that created a kind of blousy bodice with very simple A-line skirt. I think I had a short sundress in that pattern, too. This was all very late-70s --- one of the formal dresses was actually in a sort of calico/Liberty micro-floral (lovely dreamy aqua blue colors) with a little lace edging along the top of the bodice, in a totally Gunny Sax kind of look. The other one was emerald green, in some kind of synthetic silk material (I'm sure it wasn't real silk, but it had that feel to it). I loved those dresses, which were not at all out of sync with the styles of the times --- and when I think of a paradigm for this dress and my expectations of it, I think of those dresses, not of midcentury structured swing-dance fit-and-flare dresses.
But you can buy Gunny Sax formal dresses from 1979 right now, if you're willing to pay the price for a high-demand vintage dress . . . so I think that this dress, too, is really not as out of step as people sometimes seem to think it is. In any case, I like it a lot, and am always reminded how much I like it whenever I put it on. This is another style I'd probably buy again in another color, if they offered it in a color I wanted and didn't already have. Cobalt in this dress, for example, would be the bomb. Or one of the pinks. Or garnet. Anyway, my ongoing review of Fiona is that she's a sleeper hit.
I just feel low-key nice in this dress. I like her with boots and a jacket in cold weather. Or boots and a drape cardigan and a scarf. I've made lots of favorite outfits with this dress in the months that I've had her. But really, the way I like her best is just like this: simple, with a pair of sandals. I love that it's warm enough not to have to layer up, and that my easy little dress can just shine on her own. And my imperfect little human body can just not worry about itself, which is always a win.
I had better feed the imperfect little human body some breakfast and make ready to feed and walk the imperfect but lovable little canine body, before I launch my work day.
LATER:
I have FINISHED and sent back the thesis draft with notes, and I have also written a (requested) evaluation of the writer and the project to the program director, as well sending in my W-9, so I can get paid. I have also walked the dog twice. On our first walk, the whole 3-mile greenway trail, a woman passing us said to me, "Your dress is gorgeous." So there's that: GO FIONA.
Also, I think I may be losing my mind. I've started reconsidering this skirt I pre-ordered months ago, which I still have to wait some weeks to receive. That is: I've started reconsidering whether I really want another skirt, or whether I might cancel my order for store credit and buy . . . I can't believe I'm even typing this . . . but another dress? . . . maybe a Brooklyn? I've done nothing but critique that style, but lately this question has crept into my mind . . . where it's going to stay for a while, maybe until I get the skirt and actually see whether it works or not. But I keep seeing people who sized down in the Brooklyn but got a long version, and it doesn't look like medical scrubs, but actually pretty cute. What is happening to me? (Yes, really, this is nuts. I don't want to buy another dress, and I don't want to buy that one. I don't know what's gotten into me.)
Good thing I'm over the no-buy year? Like, WAY over the no-buy year?