More rosemary, because it's blooming and beautiful right now. The best landscaping is edible landscaping --- I last used this particular rosemary plant in my Greek lentil soup of late last week.
It's another dry, sunny day, although another hurricane is brewing and looks to be a bad one. Right now Florida is bracing for it. I pray people are spared the worst there, but I also pray that it misses the Blue Ridge Mountains. People there are already cold at night, still without water, trying to pick their lives up out of the mud left by flooding and landslides.
Here, it's a good bit cooler today, with highs at the lower end of the 70s Farenheit instead of the 80s. Low tonight is 49F, actually chilly. I'm excited about that right now because I can be: my house is warm and dry, with hot water and the kettle on the boil.
Today is the husband's long day at work, with his campus group meeting tonight. Right now he's off to the gym; I'm about to bathe and wash my hair, then get dressed, glancing at the loose list of outfit ideas I made on Sunday.
All I have on today is work at home: struggling (still) to get an essay written for this Thursday, because sometimes I just hit a wall. Then more to start sketching out for next week. I need to choose and rehearse a 20-minute excerpt from the short-story collection to read Thursday night. And I need to make some headway on my November lecture and my remarks for the closing keynote panel at the Catholic Imagination Conference.
And walk and manage the dog, because that's always on tap.
POST-BATH/HAIR-WASH:
OK, I'm all clean, and my hair is about 3/4 dry, thanks to a few minutes with the diffuser. Wearing it down while it finishes drying, and we'll just see how it looks as the day unfolds.
Wearing:
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Teal, bought November 2022, last worn September 23. Total wears to date this year: 17
*Secondhand Connemara Knitwear merino cardigan, bought October 2024, first wear (and yes, I'll be taking it off later, but it's actually not too warm right now
*Secondhand Allbirds gray-blue tencel-merino leggings, bought January or February 2024, last worn . . . quite some time ago. But leggings weather is on its way back! And I'll be sick of it before it goes away again!
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris (though I might change into my Stegmann clogs, just for a change of pace)
This cardigan, which arrived yesterday morning, is one of my handful of purchases from the last week. These were probably anxiety/dopamine purchases --- in fact, I know they were. I'm coping with my anxiety about all these upcoming events by buying clothes to wear for them, and the only wonder is that I haven't bought more.
Anyway, I've been wanting another green cardigan. This one looked a lot darker in online photos, which is why I bought it, but in fact I'm really happy with the color. It will carry me through the winter and into the spring, and go with, I think, literally every item of clothing I own: pinks, blues, teals, greens, purples, and brown.
It's a little bulky, and like my other Aran-knit cardigan, I believe it's probably been shrunk. It has that felted feel, and the arms are a hair short, and the shape is a little strange --- but I can work with it. Fortunately I push my sleeves up anyway. It will work for a certain mode of outfit, the big-chunky-knit mode, but again, that's okay. I have plenty of close-fitting fine-knit cardigans. This one hits at just about the right spot on my waist and can be tucked under as well. I can also try double-buttoning it to adjust the shape on my body, but today I've just shown it both unbuttoned and buttoned.
I'm especially happy that it will pair well with my Cinnamon Rose Leila dress, which I want to keep wearing through the winter. The waist, again, hits in the right spot, and the soft green looks good with that weird chameleon pink (which is harder to combine with other colors than you might imagine --- cobalt blue is okay but not my fave, light blue is good, aqua is even better . . .).
(I do really love this chameleon pink. It shouldn't look good on me --- yet it does.)
Meanwhile once the weather does get cold, which it will, this sweater will be the perfect warm layer, on its own and under my Gore-Tex jacket. I'm looking forward to layering it with literally all my dresses and skirts, and enjoying the play of the chunky texture and pattern with various other textures.
I have also bought a magenta sweater --- actually I've bought three, but two orders ended up being canceled because the seller "didn't have item" anymore. I guess people sell on multiple platforms and don't always keep up with what sells on one, to take the item down or mark it "not for sale" on others. I don't sell on multiple platforms for that very reason. I'd never keep up with things. Anyway, the third order seems to have "taken," and I'm happy with it: a dark raspberry/magenta Ann Taylor cashmere blazer cardigan. It's cropped and shorter than the purple merino Talbots one I've had for a couple of years, and I hope it's going to turn out to be the dark intense pink I've been looking for in a cardigan. I don't really want hot pink --- though if it does turn out to be hot pink, I'll keep it and wear it. But I've had my eye out for a dark purply pink for a long time, and I hope this is it. I have a dress in that kind of color, of course, but I've really wanted a cardigan in that color to pair with greens, teals, blues, purples, browns, and my floral pinafore dress.
I have moved along two old cardigans that were in such worn shape that I really was not reaching for them anymore --- they've gone into my holding bag, which I'll transfer to one of those Trashie Take-Back bags at the end of the year. While I believe in wearing things for a long time, mending and keeping them in circulation, there does come a point when a reasonable person says: This clothing item is Past It. So I think it's okay that I have outboxed a couple of items, at least one of which I've owned secondhand and worn for over a decade, and replaced them with items that are not new, but are new to me.
I am trying to keep the dopamine-seeking impulses in check, and it's hard. But I'm also fairly happy with what I've bought, all of which contributes to my wearing my same stable of dresses year-round, winter as well as summer. Aside from layers that are too much in the summer, I really don't want to have seasonal wardrobes that I have to switch out. I just want to keep wearing the same things I like as base outfits, warmed up with sweaters and tights in ways that look good and make sense. In some winters that's been a struggle, and winter outfits are always the ones I'm dissatisfied with, especially when I look back at them. But I think this year I've made some headway toward being happy with things all through the year --- which in turn makes me feel confident and less self-conscious, and therefore less anxious.
And now I'd better turn my attention to the rest of the day.