Old bottles in the sunroom window, catching the early light. It's cold out there, 21F right now, and I'm drinking my coffee and waking up. I'll let it warm up more before Dora and I venture out.
Daily agenda: same as it ever was. I hope to get through another 100 pages of this MFA thesis. Maybe more, since I don't also have to write an essay today. Walk the dog, maybe heft some weights since I didn't yesterday . . . maybe put sheets back on the upstairs beds and think about getting ready for weekend houseguests . . .
Japanese jumper should get here today. I was all keyed up for it to come yesterday (and in fact had tentatively imagined today's outfit around it), but by yesterday it had only reached Charlotte. Today it's marked "out for delivery," though, so maybe it'll hit the porch soon. I'll try it on in any case, and if it fits and I like it, I'll integrate it into whatever I'm wearing. Skirt is supposed to get here tomorrow --- I should track it more closely to see whether or not that's actually true. And the last two jumpers should get here Friday, just in time for me to not wear one of them all Advent, because it's not really purple-friendly. But that's okay. It will be a little extra fast (if I even like it, which I'll know only after I've tried it on).
First-thing-in-the-morning-me, with hair actually long enough to make a tiny ponytail:
I don't know that I want to grow it out, because I do like it shorter, but it's nice to be able to do this, with a velour scrunchie. As you can see, Sierra is my go-to sleep-and-house dress in this colder weather, with my Aran cardigan as the closest thing to a bathrobe I'll ever wear (bathrobe=some layer over whatever I slept in).
Husband is heading out to have a permanent crown put on his tooth, the end (we hope) of a process that has been protracted over some weeks. It began with his tooth breaking --- in August, I think. Then a root canal in . . . October? Then, at the start of this month, a temporary crown which almost immediately fell off. Now the permanent crown is made, and we hope it will stay on long enough for archaeologists, some milennia hence, to find it among the dust in the Abbey cemetery, which is where we hope to lie one day to await the end of time. Whether the day will come before the achaeologists milennia hence, or after: who can tell? Not us, that's for sure.
In the present, however, I think I will shortly go and put on some manner of clothing, with an eye to keeping warm. The day isn't going to be that cold, ultimately --- the projected high is 49F. But I plan to turn the heat down, once it's just me in the house, and things are bound to feel drafty, because this house just is drafty.
Trying to decide what to put on that I could just put a pinafore over, and either keep it on that way or not. And . . . here's the evolution of an outfit, which I think I actually quite like:
First, the base outfit, which would be fine on its own if I needed to strip off layers later.
*Wool& Maggie dress in Aegean Teal (small long size)
*Patagonia base-layer navy merino tee, with the neckline cut out (it was a men's tee). I just followed the line of the set-in crew neck with my scissors, but it tends not to stay straight under clothes. Oh well. I still like it a lot better as a scoop neck and will wear it a lot more this way than I did when it was intact.
*Snag merino tights, originally Sand Dollar color, redyed with Jacquard Sapphire dye
*Xero Tari boots
Now adding layers:
Why change a winning team? I was already wearing the Aran cardigan, and it's about the warmest layer I own. Back on with it!
And finally:
I have my choice of scarves, and I'm trying to vary things up, not just wear the same one day after day. My eye fell on this little scarf, which the Texasgirl knit for me when she was in high school. Back in the day, she used to get up, listen to audiobooks, and knit until after lunch, whereupon she would begin her actual schoolwork. I have a couple of relics of that time, and this is one of them. The fiber is probably acrylic --- I'm fairly sure all yarn was bought at Walmart. Still, she made it, and I'm wearing it.
So this is the look for the morning. It might change, depending on what shows up in the mail. Also, the husband and I are venturing out to the pub tonight, because he has to work late tomorrow, so I will certainly polish myself up to appear in public. But for dog-walking and thesis-reading and keeping warm in the house, this is fine.
POST-WALK UPDATE:
We walked for about 45 minutes in the brisk sunshine. It's warmed up now to 41F, and in my coat and hat and layers, I was almost too warm, once I'd gotten going.
Dora keeps thinking my mittens (a matching set with this hat, my Christmas gift from my mother-in-law last year) are stuffy toys and trying to bite them off my hands, so that's fun.
Anyway, we walked down to the end of the Park loop, then around into the neighborhood adjacent to ours, where the houses, mostly 1970s ranchers, but nice ones, back up to woods, and a creek snakes through. In the summer you can't see it very well for the trees, but in the winter, with everything bare around it, it creeps along placidly and clearly between its gullied banks, thick with fallen leaves.
At the bottom of the Park loop, we found a male cardinal sitting on the street. I think he was young --- his red feathers hadn't completely grown in. He was sitting very still with his wings loose at his sides, and I thought he might be dead, until Dora put her mouth on him and he began to flap. I made her let go of him --- and I don't think she had seized him hard --- and he flapped over into the grass in front of a house and sat there. I don't know whether he was cold, or hurt, or sick, but he clearly couldn't fly away. I suppose a man would have taken him up and snapped his neck, to put him out of any pain, or save him from a far less clean death, but even if I hadn't had Dora with me, I don't think I could have done that. It would very probably have been the kind thing to do. I'm aware enough of this to be still thinking about it an hour later. But even in that knowledge, I don't think I could have done it with my own hands, and I don't account that to myself as righteousness.
But other than that, it was a nice walk, quiet and uneventful. And when we got home, the mail had come, and lo! Packages! For me!
First, the Japanese jumper:
I stripped off my dress and tried it on over the base-layer tee I was wearing. Then I took off the base-layer tee, put my Maggie dress back on, and tried that:
Yeah, baby! This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. It fits perfectly over a full dress --- there's room even for the dress pockets not to be too bulky underneath. The pinafore, meanwhile, also has pockets.
It's a very nutty brown, is the only way I can describe the color. A little more orange than I had hoped, maybe, but then I'd always be wearing it with something under. And I kind of like branching out into some earthier colors, even though in general I don't wear actual earth tones. Soft browns, though, do go nicely with the things I'd be wearing them with, like this wool dress. All in all, this feels like a great neutral, and I think I'll wear it a lot, all through the year. It'll be perfect with boots, sandals, all my shoes. I can wear sweaters under it (thinking especially of my thrifted cashmere turtleneck, but any of my thinner sweaters would work). I can wear tanks under it --- I can envision getting some actual wear out of the pink Eileen Fisher merino tank I bought last winter and then didn't have much to wear it with. I think my Wisteria Willow will make a great underlayer in Advent.
Addendum: one thing I can really see doing is wearing my Camellia dress to hike, then popping this dress over to go out to dinner after. As ratty as she's starting to be, Camellia would still be a fantastic under-layer for this pinafore in the warm weather. Or maybe even in the cold . . .
If I decide I don't like the color, I can always dye it --- I could overdye it with gray, for example, to tone down the brown. But for now I'm happy with it.
Back on with the Aran cardigan. Even minus the base-layer tee, I'm perfectly comfortable with the heat turned down. This is a very heavy linen, which is nice, being less likely to wrinkle.
Also, my skirt came. It is in fact the same model as a couple of linen skirts I'd bought at Target, eons ago, and wore till they fell to pieces. It's not a fine piece of clothing, but the lines are nice.
As you can see, it's currently white. It looks very stark with the other things I'm wearing, and I don't think I would ever really wear a white skirt, even in the summertime. But I'm about to dye it with tea.
First, though, I'm going to eat some turkey soup, do my word puzzles, and read some pages of this MFA thesis.
WORK BREAK:
I'm making a lot of progress on the thesis, which is a good bit shorter and more economical than it was in its previous draft.
Also dyeing the skirt. I started with tea, but then remembered a pouch of matcha powder I had in the cabinet --- we don't much like matcha, it turns out, so it had just been sitting there for a couple of years, and I thought: green?
The tea had softened the white base to a pale ecru, which I think was probably helpful. White is a great base for dyeing, obviously, because it's not already another color, but then again, it is another color. With natural dyes, anyway, it can be a little hard to get a bright-white fabric to take enough dye to darken it even to a medium tone.
Now, in the matcha, it's looking like a greener ecru. I'm thinking that if I can get it to a pale olive, that will be nice. It's just after half-past one now, and my plan is to leave the skirt in the hot dye bath on the stovetop until after 4. Then I'll run it through the wash and see what I end up with. Even if it's something totally indeterminate, that will be better than bright white.
So, if all goes well, in the skirt department I'll have:
* 2 floral skirts (one rayon with blue background, one linen-blend with off-white background and blue, teal, and green in the pattern)
* 1 red linen skirt
* 1 black cotton pencil skirt (for funerals, choir, etc --- though I might wear it sometimes just because, who knows?)
* 1 linen skirt in a pale greenish neutral
This seems like a good complement to work with my various dresses and shirts. I'm still not much of a separates person, but I do like the variety that skirts bring, and sometimes a skirt and top is nice, even if I haven't worn such a thing in over a year, that I can recall.
I'll also have in the pinafore/jumper department, assuming things fit and look the way I want them to:
*this (actually tea-colored) pinafore I'm currently wearing
*a linen pinafore with a pink, blue, and green floral design on a white background
*a brown linen sleeveless dress that can be worn as a pinafore or alone --- this actually is a Not Perfect Linen piece whose price got dropped so steeply that I thought: OK, this is the last thing, but why not? Again, brown is not a color I've really been wearing, but this looked soft and muted. I could get it and find that I'm really wrong, but it seems like a shade that would harmonize with both my hair and skin colors and with my closet palette.
OK, enough thinking about clothes (OK, this is the last thing, she said, knowing what famous last words those are). I'm going to stir my skirt, make my bed, and resume my reading.
2:45 pm UPDATE:
Mmm-mmm, matcha! It is awfully reflective, though.
And here's the skirt in the matcha, an hour and change after my previous update:
I plan to leave it in the dye bath until 4:30, which is 2 hours and 15 minutes from now. We shall see what we shall see. I'm pretty sure it's going to wind up very pale, but I'm also pretty sure it won't be white.
Again --- and granted, I'm wearing dark wintry clothes, so the dissonance is turned up to 11, but still. Bright white feels actually dissonant to me. Even my wedding dress wasn't white like this --- it was more of an oyster white. I would struggle to wear this skirt in white, even in the summer. But some soft greenish-brown off-white . . . I think that will work just fine, even in the winter.
Also, Wool&'s Aegean Teal is just the bomb of colors. I have every teal color Wool& makes, and I love them all, but this is my favorite. And I'm really enjoying it with this jumper. But I have to underscore how much I liked the original outfit I put on this morning. Filing it away to repeat.
Back to work again.
FINAL SKIRT UPDATE:
Here it is, still damp, hung against my creamy bathroom wall. As I predicted, it's pale. BUT it's not stark white.
You can see how the contrast between the fabric and the button isn't as high. The fabric is now almost exactly the color of the light part of the button. I guess you'd call it a pale putty color? Whatever its name is, I like it.
So this feels like a win. It's still a light-colored skirt --- and I didn't have a solid light-colored skirt. It's a light color that will harmonize just fine with all my other clothes. It's a light color that I can see wearing summer and winter.
I'll let it dry overnight and run an iron over it in the morning. Then maybe --- who knows? --- maybe I'll put it on.
BEDTIME UPDATE:
Back from chilly walk with husband and dog, might get some actual dye and dye that skirt, stay tuned . . .
PS: Just thinking this because, as it's dried, the skirt is even lighter. Better than bright white, but still . . . I'm not sure that this was an entirely successful experiement, but we soldier on.