Jam-jar wineglasses on the butler's pantry.
A new month! The last month of the year! I see that I have gone off the rails in my counting of the days of this year --- this should be Day 334, I think. Somewhere in the tumble of the months I've lost two days, so we'll just add them on from now on. And next year: no counting days. We all know how many days there are in a year.
I spent yesterday afternoon driving with AK; today I've got to push through this MFA thesis and be done. I also really need to clean the upstairs bathroom and the fridge, but maybe those can wait till tomorrow. It's about ten degrees colder today than yesterday: above freezing now, but not supposed to warm up much, thanks to the rain in the forecast. I'll get out with the dog as always, but I think it's probably going to be a good day to coccoon and read.
Wearing:
*Wool& Fiona dress (medium) in teal
*Thrifted Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (m/l) in chocolate brown
*Thrifted cobalt merino cardigan
*Snag merino tights in navy
*Xero Tari boots
Well, to begin with, I can see what all the Not Perfect Linen fuss is about. This dress --- which I bought for an unbelievable song on Poshmark (and could resell in five minutes if I decided I wanted to, especially if I asked what I paid for it) --- is a gorgeous dress. The linen is a marvelously heavy linen, though not as heavy and slubby as the fabric in my Japanese pinafore of the other day. The design and craftsmanship are so lovely.
This is a very fit-and-flare dress, as you can see.
This is the second brown jumper I've acquired via secondhand avenues this week, which . . . is weird for me. I am not, in general, a brown-wearing person. But I think I like this soft muted brown, which does play nicely with blues here. I think it's going to be easy to wear and style. I can especially see wearing it over my Wisteria Willow during Advent and Lent. If I ever find the rose-pink cardigan I have been dreaming of for some time now, that would be pretty with this color as well. And it could be fun to wear this dress just as she comes with my red Mary Janes in the summer.
I'd been a little worried about the fit of the bodice, since this is a large, and up top is where I am not large. But it honestly fits pretty well. The armholes aren't too deep, and I don't think the neckline is, either. I could wear this dress all by itself and be fine.
The thing I have in the back of my mind, too, is that I can wear these dresses, see how I like them --- and resell them if I find that I don't. After two years of wearing almost exclusively Wool& dresses, it feels weird, almost a little anxious-making, to be wearing something else . . . but I don't know that that means that the something else is wrong. It's fun to try some new silhouettes and designs and colors. But I think it's also good to buy things that I can readily sell back again if I decide that they don't work for me.
My Fiona dress works really well as an under-layer for the linen dress. I should be comfortable indoors and out all day.
WORK BREAK:
I've got fewer than a hundred pages to go in the MFA thesis --- should be able to finish it and send it back to my student by mid-afternoon, God willing.
Meanwhile, my last new-to-me pinafore has landed on the porch. And . . .
Costume change! I don't often do this, because I hate changing clothes and being indecisive, but I love this dress, and I won't be able to wear it, really during Advent.
Here's the print up close --- isn't it pretty? The fabric is a lovely, heavy linen-cotton blend, with these flowers and leaves on an ecru background. I'd thought, from the photos, that the background was white, and I'm really happy that it's this instead. This photo, remarkably, shows the colors very truly --- lovely blues, pinks, and burgundies, with taupe-y details in the leaves.
I love the soft smock silhouette and the almost-ankle length.
Unlike the NPL dress, this isn't a stand-alone dress. It was made to be a pinafore, with very deep armholes. It's a vintage piece, from the 90s --- the kind of dress I missed when they went out of production and am glad to rediscover in the online secondhand trade.
Anyway, as it's not very purple-friendly, I wanted to go ahead and wear it, though I did take off my NPL dress with some reluctance. I've kept on Fiona as a base layer, and put my blue cardigan back on, because it works, too --- nothing changed but the pinafore.
I am loving these ways to extend my existing wardrobe --- I can repeat-wear things without its looking or feeling that I'm repeat-wearing them. I'll certainly wear both my Maggies as layers under this dress, and my teal Willow. Camellia will be a perfect sleeveless under-layer. Beetroot Brooklyn? Yes ma'am. And my pink thrifted Eileen Fisher merino tank, which has languished largely unworn . . . perfect layer under this dress. Ditto the teal cashmere-blend tank I wore under my dress on Sunday.
So there you have it. This is the last of my clothing-purchases-for-me of 2023 --- which has not, I must admit, been anything like a low-buy year. But again, I am making no further resolutions. Well, except that I resolve to wear and enjoy this dress today . . . and then fast from it in Advent while I wear purple and purple-friendly things.
Back to work.
MID-AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Alert the media, because I have finished and sent back my thesis notes, AND I have cleaned the refrigerator and ordered groceries. All I have left to do in the house before our guests arrive sometime tomorrow is vacuum and clean the upstairs bathroom.
It's gray out there and drizzling. I feel I should want to go outside. I feel I should make myself want to go outside. I feel I should make myself go outside whether I want to or not. Yet here I sit.
I'm almost finished with The Peregrine, which in addition to all the other brain-bludgeoningly good prose moments also contains sentences like I walked ten miles along the river. Well, I walked 1.54 miles along the Park Loop, buddy.
EVENING:
The face of a person drinking seltzer water in the kitchen and feeling happy because the guest bed is made, the fridge is clean, the MFA thesis is read and done, the groceries are in, and there was heavy cream to make scalloped potatoes with. Truly, this is the good life.