Spring evening light in the dining room, which never receives direct light of any kind. That chair is very beautiful; it's also among the world's least comfortable chairs to sit in. So it just takes up space there, being beautiful, until we're that desperate for seating.
Also, the glow of evening on the peonies and primroses:
These are evening primrose, actually, not the primulas that English people are familiar with. I grew them from seed last year, and this year for the first time they're flowering. I love their papery pink blooms and the way they seem to blow around even when they're completely still. The nice thing about them is that they reseed themselves readily, so I hope they'll be springing up in unexpected places next year.
The peonies, meanwhile, are knocking themselves out. The thing about peonies is that they're unbelievably finicky --- they don't like to be moved, and if you do dig them up and move them, they will sulk for literal years. They come up, but they steadfastly refuse to bloom. The good news is that eventually they get over it, forgive you, and go about the business of being gorgeous, as God intended them to do. They get bigger every year and put forth more show. So if you have time to be patient, they are massively rewarding. Once they're in a spot where you never have to touch them again, they require nothing of you except to go on not messing with them. They will submit to your cutting their flowers to bring inside, and as long as you don't bother them otherwise, they are good to go, presumably until the end of time.
The foliage doesn't die back until fall, either, so even when their bloom is over, they still make a nice green hedge. I could wish that they were evergreens and stayed up in the winter, but I can't have everything I want, I guess.
Finished my Herrick essay last night and now must ponder another Robert: Robert Browning. That essay isn't up till next Thursday, but I'd like to get all of next week taken care of this week, so that I can take care of the following week next week, and so on. Otherwise, the day's agenda is all dog walking, weights, a little housecleaning, etc.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Brooklyn (S/Long) in Pacific, bought May 2023, last worn April 24. Wears in 2025: 3
*Kosher Casuals crop top in Denim Blue, year 2 of wear
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris, year 2 of wear
Catching up on wearing my Brooklyn dresses now that Lent is over and the weather is warm. I still haven't put a tack stitch in at the crossover point in the bodice yet, but I really think I'm going to. I don't mind wearing this dress, especially, with crop tops, because I like the color combinations --- both last week's teal and this week's dusty indigo look nice with this green. BUT I don't want always to have to do that. I'm less happy with the available colors combined with my Beetroot Brooklyn, for one thing, and for another, I simply like the less cluttered look of the dress on its own. But I'm increasingly uncomfortable wearing both these dresses without some kind of amendment to the neckline. Last year it didn't bother me so much, possibly because the bodices hadn't stretched out this much. This dress, especially, which I've had about half a year longer than the other, feels as though it's developed a lot of give --- everywhere, which I don't mind when it's the skirt, but which I do mind up top. I do not trust it to stay in place, and I do not want to feel exposed, or even potentially exposed, everywhere I go.
So maybe today I will go ahead and put those stitches in so that I can wear these dresses without worry. I think I'd wear them a lot more regularly than I have been wearing them if I weren't concerned about flashing the world. It's funny to me that these dresses feel so much more skimpy than my Fionas do --- they are not actually shorter in the skirt at all, but somehow they feel that way to me. With the bodices tacked more securely shut, they would not in fact be any more revealing than my Fionas, which I have worn to church many times.
OK, I think I'm going to do that NOW, without further ado. Then maybe I could just wear this dress on its own, which I would prefer.
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Yeah, now it's not going anywhere. I still get the flattering crossover v-neck --- more flattering than a crew neck for sure --- but not the gape. What I REALLY wish is that Wool& would make these surplice bodices stitched down, all the way from the crossover to the waistband. I have had a t-shirt with this kind of bodice that was stitched down all the way, and it was great. I know it can be done. I suppose at some point I could take these dresses to my seamstress and see if she would stitch down the whole top layer, so that it stays in place --- but today, as they say, is not that day.
Here's Beetroot Brooklyn, stitched up now, for comparison:
I think I took this crossover even higher. Now Pacific Brooklyn feels low --- but I'm not doing anything more about it right now. The main thing is that the neckline is not going to fall open. Much as I love my Branwyn bra, I feel better knowing that I'm not about to share it with the world at large.
I can always pick these stitches out later if I don't like them, but for now they make me feel that I can wear these dresses --- which I do love --- with greater confidence and less self-consciousness.
Also, yes, I think the Beetroot dress is a half-size smaller than the Pacific, but this again might be simply a function of wear. I have worn the green dress more. It's gone to Norway twice. It's been part of many travel capsules, while the magenta dress has stayed home. I think maybe that could change . . .
But today I am back in my Pacific dress, familiar and beloved if --- until now --- a tad unreliable. Soon it will be time to walk the dog and get on with life.
It's supposed to be fairly hot, by the way --- 86F --- with thunderstorms. I think I'm glad I fixed this dress so that I can wear it without the extra (synthetic) layer. I should be easy-peasy cool-breezy all day. This is the time of year when what you want is a light easy dress and simple hair, off your neck. Yesterday I was enjoying being able to braid my hair, but today I'm glad it's long enough that the default ponytail looks better and more interesting than it did at shorter lengths. Parting my hair closer to the middle makes a ponytail look a little more intentional somehow --- and I can use spray gel to smooth it down if I want, for a neater (and again, more intentional) look.
Well, again, off we go.
LUNCHTIME UPDATE
*Herrick essay finished and uploaded
*dog walked and fed (fingers crossed that her tummy continues on the mend)
*lunch eaten (leftovers of last night's dinner, which was shredded chicken in cauliflower rice, with grape tomatoes, sliced black olives, a little neufchatel cream cheese, onion, chipotle powder, cumin, cayenne pepper flakes --- all baked, then topped with some plain Greek yogurt and fresh cilantro. Just as good today as it was on the porch last night
Now I just feel like thinking fun, creative, low-stakes thoughts about clothing. Why clothing? Because that's fun, creative, and low-stakes, that's why.
Tomorrow, of course, is the first day of May, another glorious spring month here in North Carolina. We're posting heady spring poems on the Substack, and you can see how I'm dressing for it.
I had said that I wanted to create a blue capsule for May, the month dedicated to Mary, and this I plan to do --- loosely. I'm not setting myself the kind of stringent rules I lived by in Lent. This is NOT LENT. Also, fortunately for me, just about every article of clothing I own either is some shade of blue or else goes with blue. So this can be pretty wide open.
Items I definitely want to foreground this month
*April Cornell blue floral maxi skirt, last worn to the Easter Vigil
*Dusty Blue NPL Bay tank --- also worn to the Easter Vigil
*Floral pinafore (has a lot of blue in the pattern
*Blue Indian cotton gauze tunic
*Flax periwinkle linen tunic
*Evening blue linen button shirt
*Old blue rayon shrug cardigan
*Cobalt merino cardigan
*Navy linen-blend long cardigan
*Crocheted cotton periwinkle cardigan
*Teal Fiona (I count teal as blue, mostly)
*Marine Blue Fiona
*Aegean Teal Maggie, at least as a top with skirts or under pinafores
Outfits around these key blue pieces
*Indian gauze tunic + floral pinafore
*Indian gauze tunic + beige linen Japanese pinafore
*Indian gauze tunic + floral maxi skirt
*Indian gauze tunic + Black Heather Audrey
*Blue Bay tank + floral pinafore
*Blue Bay tank + beige linen pinafore
*Blue Bay tank + floral maxi
*Blue Bay tank + red linen maxi
*Oatmeal Bay tank + floral maxi
*Oatmeal Bay tank + floral pinafore
*Aegean Teal Maggie + floral maxi
*Maggie + floral pinafore
*Maggie + beige pinafore
*Flax tunic + Black Heather Audrey
*Flax tunic + Iris Blue Sierra (not really counting that as blue, because it's manifestly purple, but I can wear it with blue)
*Evening Blue button shirt + Audrey
*Blue rayon shrug + Cinnamon Rose Leila
*Blue rayon shrug + Chocolate Brown Leila
*Cobalt merino cardigan + floral pinafore
*Cobalt merino cardigan + Dusty Blue tank + floral maxi
Any of these blue cardigans, actually, would work with
*Pacific Brooklyn
*Beetroot Brooklyn
*Purple Sage Sofia
*Black Heather Audrey (maybe not the navy longline cardigan --- too dark to look that good with this dress)
*Teal Fiona
*Marine Blue Fiona (all but cobalt --- I don't think that would work as well as either another navy or a contrasting light blue)
*Trades of Hope silk/cotton kimono (which is greenish with navy accents, so contains some blue) with either Fiona, Pacific Brooklyn, Maggie, Audrey
Again, I've just come out of a fairly limited capsule season and don't want to do that again. My idea here is to foreground certain things in my closet that tend to get less wear, such as my blue floral maxi. I love it, and I think it will be good to nudge myself to wear it this month. I don't want to restrict myself, though. If I feel like wearing, say, this Pacific Brooklyn dress by itself, I simply will. I'm always wearing my Miraculous Medal, and that has a blue background, so really, I'm covered in the Mary department, no matter what. But May seems like a nice impetus for planning outfits, so I don't forget to wear things.
OK, back to some kind of higher-stakes thought, if I can manage it.
LATE-AFTERNOON UPDATE
I have
*written over 900 words of prose for my own project
*written three paragraphs on Robert Browning (to be finished tomorrow)
*walked the dog again and used vagus-nerve massage to calm her down when a big dog barked at her from a yard, and she wanted to take it up with him
*fed the dog more boiled chicken and canned pumpkin, for which she has a voracious appetite --- a good sign. No more evident stomach upsets. I think --- I HOPE --- we're well around the corner.
So I'm clocking off for the day, at least from the Substack writing. I am VERY MUCH enjoying my newly amended Brooklyn dress in the meantime. It's great to wear a dress I've long loved and felt good in, without the attendant worry and self-consciousness that a too-low/too-revealing neckline can generate. I hadn't realized just how much it was bothering me until suddenly the bother went away. This one tiny, easy amendment --- just a good thick layer of stitching that tacks the top of the hem of the under-cross to the underside of the hem of the over-cross, if you follow me (sewing the bottom cross-bodice to the back of the edge of the top cross-bodice, without poking the needle all the way through, so that so that no stitches show on the outside) --- makes all the difference, without radically altering the look of the dress.
I think I will wear both this dress and my Beetroot Brooklyn MUCH more often now that I've done this. I can wear them with longer skirts for church without worrying that I'm flashing anyone up top --- though I could just wear them on their own. This Pacific Brooklyn, especially, isn't really any shorter than my Fionas. I don't know why, in my mind, it feels shorter, but it does. Maybe now I'll get over that, just as I'll get over feeling that I'm flashing my friends' husbands at the pub if I wear one of these dresses out. The extra coverage, minimal as it is, will mean, I think, that I'll find these dresses easier to wear in the winter as well. This one weird trick has given me my wardrobe back, in its fullest capacity, and I'm happy about that. It's good to quit saying I'm going to, and just do the thing.
And yeah, I love these colors. I was so looking forward to having them back after Lent, and now I really do have them back. I can pack them for one of these Dallas trips. I can take them to our friends' house on the Perquimmons River, near the coast, in June. I can wear them out for pub night and to whatever parties we get invited to over the summer. I know I'm going on about this, but really, it is kind of life-changing, in a way that I didn't realize it would be until I did the thing.
Also yeah, I will be wearing these dresses in May. I have blue things that go with them. No binding rules in Eastertide! Just a little devotional impulse that will also be fun, and will mean that some oft-neglected items in my closet get worn with intentionality.
Again, these are low-stakes thoughts. Essays about poetry: high stakes. My own fiction and poetry: extremely high stakes, like life or death. Talking about clothes --- a relief, really. Just fun. Fun to have clothes, wear them, and consider their possibilities. Not that I don't kind of have a theology around all these things, or at least some ethical framework. but truly, the stakes are not that high.