St. Leo's Hall, Belmont Abbey College, in front of which I was sitting, waiting for my husband, after Mass yesterday.
Today: Emily Dickinson, plus choir tonight.
Wearing a lot of linen this week because I won't be packing any for Norway. I also plan to hand-wash the wool dresses I am taking for the trip and give them plenty of time to dry and air. The outfit list I made yesterday for the week should, again, prove pretty helpful, encouraging me as always to make more of a tour around my closet than I otherwise would do.
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (M/L) in Chocolate Brown, bought December 2023, modified by me (and my seamstress), last worn May 12 --- wow, almost a month ago.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024, last worn day before yesterday
I love this dress --- I realize I say that about pretty much every dress I put on, but I really do. It feels like a luxury to be able to say that, but then that has been the goal, not to own any clothing item I don't love. The fact that I haven't worn this dress in almost a month says nothing about how much I love it as an individual items of clothing --- it simply means that I have a number of other clothes I love, too. I had originally written "a lot of other clothes," but "a lot" is a relative term. My closet is small, and it's not exploding with stuff.
It's not the tidiest --- my shoes, especially, are a bit of a jumble at the moment. But everything I have, minus socks and underwear, fits handily in this one relatively (by American closet standards) limited space.
Still, I realize that a given piece can go a month or even more without my wearing it. Is that bad? Does that mean I don't "reach for it?" I don't think so. For me, anyway, this works. It's kind of a sweet spot, actually. Several years into my wool-wearing adventure, I have begun to see pretty clearly how heavily frequent wear tells on a wool dress. Yes, they're sturdy as knitwear goes, and you can wear them in all kinds of situations (I have, for sure). But they're not made of cast iron.
I imagine the same is true of linen, though I haven't had these dresses long enough to see the effects of wear. The pink linen trousers I bought in April, which are from a less "nice" brand than NPL or Flax, already show some pilling --- they came that way, in fact, so it's not that I've inflicted that wear. It's minimal, and I don't mind it. Clothes do show signs of wear after a while. But it just highlights the fact that linen isn't cast iron, either.
So for me that sweet spot seems to be a fairly long rota, where things don't go unworn for months and months, but yeah, an individual piece might hang for a month before I put it on again. Or it might not. Just depends. One thing I do want to get past is the feeling that these Leila dresses, particularly, are too special for everyday. That is, they are special. They're what I put on for parties and occasions. I'll probably wear my Cinnamon Rose Leila to sing for ordinations on Saturday, since we don't strictly have to wear concert dress. But these dresses are as comfortable as any other dresses I own, work perfectly well with a pair of Birkenstocks, and really should see the light of day on a more ordinary --- if not necessarily more frequent --- basis.
Anyway, for a warm day (high of 83F) with choir tonight, this dress feels like a lovely choice. It's cool in the house, and there will be air conditioning (probably) in the choir room, so even though the outfit is fine as is, I have the option of a cardigan to polish off the look:
*Secondhand Brooks Brothers pink merino cardigan, bought November 2023, last worn, with this dress actually, on April 24. I'll probably take it off momentarily, and just toss it in my bag when I go to choir. But I do like the creamy baby pink with this soft brown.
Also, if I were, in the summertime, going somewhere like Italy or France or Greece or even Germany, I would totally take linen as the basis of my travel capsule, with a spray bottle to mist out the wrinkles. Linen makers maintain that linen is the perfect travel fabric, and although I used to resist that idea, because I'm not about to spend my vacation ironing, any more than I spend my time at home ironing, I've come to think that they're right. As it is, I'm kind of sad to leave these dresses behind for two weeks. But I think that, given where we're going (a Nordic country) and what we plan to do there (a lot of mountain hiking, interspersed with relatively few city days), my wool dresses will serve me much better. Alas for me that I can't take everything, but really. Reason has to prevail here.
And so to work.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
I've written about 1400 words of my 2K-word piece, and will probably end up having to cut, which is the hard part. Took a break and ate lunch, read Laurus in the sun for a little while, took Dora for a brief trot and potty break, hung out some clean laundry to dry on the line, since it's sunny, and vacuumed the house, which needed it desperately. Now Dora and I are chilling on the porch, and I'm taking another quick break from the work before diving back in.
I want to get through one more section of this essay today, then I can stop and breathe a little more before turning to the second book I'm supposed to be reviewing (in the same essay). Honestly, I could just have concentrated on those Letters for a 2K-word essay, and that would have been fine. I know exactly where and how I want to turn to the second book, but I'm already stressing about how much I've written and how much I have to write to achieve that turn. But oh well. Better too much than too little. And I do have to quote passages from the books --- I can't just toss out ideas about them. All of that has to be plotted and done with care, to keep things in the road.
But I feel a lot less stressed about it all than I was feeling over the weekend. I can get this done. I'm salivating for a holiday from it all, and I plan to enjoy the holiday that's coming to me, but I can get it done.
And then I'm going to stand in front of the mirror and practice saying no.
Also, I'm reminding myself how much I'm enjoying wearing all-thrifted outfits this week. Everything I planned out yesterday, with one exception, is an all-secondhand ensemble. If I've done a lot of secondhand buying in the last year and a half, well --- I'm wearing what I bought. This last week at home before the big trip seems like a good time to showcase it.