Another rainy day --- though we're due for one, after some days of sunshine. I'm off shortly to St. Michael's to sing with the festival choir for the 9 a.m. Mass. Then home again quickly to have brunch with the Artgirl before she departs for her internship.
Wearing today:
My one worry is that it's going to be cold in that church. They usually have the air conditioning blasting, and it's not hot outside. We'll see how warm this kimono really is . . .
Time to brush my teeth and get going, though. Later I'll knock out another outfit-planning list for the week. I've done this two weeks in a row now, and it's very helpful. I did have this dress on my list for today, even though I decided at the last minute to wear the kimono instead of my navy longline line-blend cardigan with it.
LATER:
Back from a lovely Mass. We sang a lot of chant, including the sequence for Corpus Christi in alternating blocks of Anglican and Gregorian chant, plus Mozart's Ave Verum and a 4-part arrangement of Franck's Panis Angelicus. It was cold in the church, as predicted, but this kimono does provide some nice light warmth. Silk is another of the miracle fibers.
Now I've just set the table while the husband makes breakfast for us all.
Thinking about clothes for the week ahead, banging together a quick list of things I want to wear. In no particular order, this week's list includes:
*Wool& Fiona, which I haven't worn since May 10, I think, so she's due for an outing. With Birks.
*Flax purple linen skirt with teal silk-cashmere-merino tank and Birks
*Japanese linen pinafore, maybe with cropped blue WoolX tee, with Birks
*Wool& Brooklyn (Pacific), with Crocs, maybe to go to Asheville Thursday night, for dinner and a walk with friends
*Wool& Audrey with today's kimono with Birks
*Wool& Maggie (Aegean Teal) with Birks
*For Sunday, Not Perfect Linen Smock dress with cardigan (probably pink, but cobalt blue also possible, or blue rayon) and Birk Papillios
Of course I grant myself permission to tweak this plan any way I like, including total departure from the plan, but at least I have a plan. If nothing else, I can just wear what I put on this list. I'm defaulting to my Birk Mayaris a lot this week because I know that's how it's going to go. I'll get up and step into them, and at night I'll take them off.
Breakfast is ready. Time to hang out.
PS: I am expecting these three Poshmark purchases sometime this week, and as they appear, I will very likely cycle them into my plan. Just depends on when the sellers put them in the mail.
I'm enjoying the variety I have on hand at the moment --- I can default to my Wool& dresses, just as I do to my Birkenstocks, and be perfectly happy. But it's nice to have a little more scope than that. Although I still prefer a whole dress to separates, I like the skirts I have and am happy to be adding one more (especially since I'm reselling one pair of linen trousers that don't fit). [ETA: Also, skirts are more versatile than trousers, because you can wear them over dresses, so on the whole, this feels like a good tradeoff.] I'm glad to have more tops, which can be worn with a skirt, a dress or pinafore, or my remaining pair of linen trousers. I can see layering with those shirts when the weather gets cold again, but in the meantime, they'll be breezy and nice as our weather heats up, with all the lovely Southern humidity.
While the Artgirl is packing her car, I thought I'd take a minute to link to some of my "saves" in my Instagram Style Mood Board folder, just for fun.
Some Pyne and Smith (super expensive even secondhand, so I doubt I'll be owning any anytime soon): this beautiful soft blue plaid. Generally I'm not a plaid person. I just don't like checks, squares, linear patterns. I'm not even much of a gingham person, though I'd wear a soft blue or rose or pale-oatmeal-on-white gingham if it offered itself to me. But I do like the muted pattern here. It's still kind of a large pattern for me, but the colors are nice.
This is a very fun little dress design. Would totally wear something like this.
More Pyne and Smith. I'm not sure I'd wear this exact dress, which I pretty much think you have to be Japanese to look good in. I would just look like Granny Nightgown. But I like the vibe with those shoes. I REALLY like those shoes.
Here's a fantasy dress. I wouldn't wear it in white unless I was getting married, but if I were getting married (again), I would wear a dress like this.
I wish Wool& would make a style like this, in this exact color. I love the crossover bodice, which doesn't look as though it would gap. I love the ruched waist. I love the length and line of the skirt. I would buy this dress, in fact, if it were not polyester. That for me is the deal breaker. But it's an awfully pretty design that I think would look good on just about anybody, of any shape or size.
Now that I'm no longer a homeschool mom, I'm free to wear all the denim dresses I want. Mind you, I don't really want to wear denim dresses all that much. I have one secondhand denim pinafore that I bought for heavy gardening and other dirty work (dyeing clothes, house painting, etc). But I might wear a dress like the one I saved here. I'd probably like it even better in linen than in denim, honestly. But I do like the long soft A-line. It looks very livable.
Forget whether I've linked this before or not, but I love this tee-skirt combo, washed navy (or charcoal? Hard for me to tell) with soft purple.
I forget, too, whether I've linked to this woman before, but I love the color combination she's wearing here, as a fall/winter look. I'd love an olive or sage-green skirt to wear with my own wine/cranberry-red cardigan for a similar vibe.
That photo makes me recall that I have tall brown leather boots on my radar for the winter as well [Well, possibly. Do I really need more boots? Second-guessing everything I have written here, but then what else is new?] --- I love my suede graphite-gray Birkenstock Melrose boots, which I wore a lot last year, as well as my brown Chelsea-style Xero Tari boots, which are still going strong after two winters. But I have missed my old tan knee boots, even though the pair I had were not that comfortable, and I'm not sorry to have donated them when I cleaned my closet last fall. Hopefully some other person is enjoying them --- they were in good shape, and I'm sure they made it onto the thrift-store shoe rack. But I would like to replace them with, say, some brown leather Birkenstock Footprints boots, if I can find a pair in my size for a decent price. I keep reminding myself how much they retail for, but even so, the particular pair I have my eye on at Poshmark haven't come down enough yet for me to go for them. It's a long time until cold weather and boots come round again. But I have found, over the last couple of years, that summer is the time to start watching for winter boots.
When I cast my eye over my closet, I begin to think that I have acquired a lot of shoes. I have a long way to go before I'm Imelda Marcos, fortunately, but I have more pairs of shoes and boots currently than I did have for years and years. What I've realized, though, is how much an outfit depends on the shoes you're wearing --- or really, just on the details that it's easy to forget about when you're fixated on the dress. If something feels off to me, nine times out of ten it's that my shoes are out of sync in some way with the rest of the composition, or with the vibe I'm going for.
And I do have rules for shoes and boots. The chief rule is that I have to be able to walk, like potentially miles, in a pair of shoes or boots. I have no time, and no room in my closet, for footwear I can't walk in, or stand up all day in, without pain or foot fatigue. The corollary to this rule is that a pair of shoes or boots must accommodate my bunion. I've had 100% success with Birkenstocks, and close to that level of success with Xero barefoot shoes, in this key area. I want my footwear to look good, but not at the expense of my comfort and mobility.
So anyway, part of the winter cardigan/skirt thing is this boots vision, because I do really miss having tall brown boots. I don't actively miss them at this very moment, but I know that in the late fall and winter I will start to miss them again.
Here's a vibe I could accomplish in my own colors, with my Tari boots. Mostly I love that this woman is my age, and she's having fun and looking great in her clothes. She also makes me kind of want to cut bangs again, but I think I will try to resist that temptation.
The heavens have opened up, and my husband, who was out for a walk, has just come tramping up the drive looking like a shipwreck survivor.
EVENING UPDATE:
Logging the dinner menu:
*leftover pork loin with ginger and mango from Thursday, shredded, mixed with more mango and some goat cheese, and made into a pie, thanks to a ready-made box crust (top and bottom) the kids brought home.
*green beans, I guess --- we had peas last night. Or I could make a salad. Anyway, some green accompaniment to pulled-pork/mango/goat-cheese pie.
There's still some ramen left over from Friday, so that'll be my lunch tomorrow.
Sent the Artgirl off to her internship --- she should, God willing, be getting there about now.
Husband stayed home to make breakfast, so went to what we fondly call the Hangover Mass this evening and should be home in the next half-hour, I hope.