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The style question for today: at what point does “keeping current” become “mutton dressed as lamb”?
As I was walking into town today, I crossed paths with a young young young woman who was dressed strikingly like me. No, I suppose it’s more accurate to say I was dressed like her. Her ensemble, which included a scarf and bright green ballet flats, looked a little more intentional than mine, which was whatever I threw on to run down to the farmer’s market: black tank, black knit trousers, a sloppy tissue-weight cardigan knotted at the waist, wide headband to keep my tousled hair out of my face, big shimmery-framed sunglasses.
That’s right: mere days after my fortieth birthday, I accidentally dressed like a hipster girl. The brief stop at the art supply store did nothing to make me forget the fact.
It’s frippery, this time with no photos. As always, if you are currently engaged to me, please do not click through.
I bought shoes.
Ah, what a sentence! Doesn’t it just sing?
No, wait, I can make it better: I bought super-stylish, crazy-handsome shoes that I love.
No, hang on: I bought super-stylish, crazy-handsome shoes that I love and need, for a quarter of the retail price.
There.
I haven’t worn a proper heel since my back was injured two years ago, and lately I’ve been wondering if I ever could again. When I found this smart pair of Dankso Tori 3-inch heels on the shelf at a local surplus-and-salvage shop, beaming out proudly amidst the plastic uppers and leopard-print pleather, it seemed like a perfect chance to find out.
Wish me luck! I’m sure Tori and I will be very happy together.
It’s not you, it’s me. Have I said this before? Well, this time I mean it. I’ve been crazy busy since deciding to start participating in markets to sell my jewellery. Of course, skipping one month of blogging leads to two, which leads to twelve. This is my slow attempt to break the ice and make an appearance or two here this year. So, I guess that’s it. See you in August.
No, wait. August is five months from now and in five months I am turning 40. I suppose I’ve been internalising a lot of what’s been going on with me, except for sharing a year in pictures over at flickr. There you’ll see happy, sad, bored and incredibly lazy, that is until about a month ago when I decided to start the markets. I’ve been beading madly away until my fingers and back hurt, but it’s so unsatisfying. I realised I’m doing it to keep from actually taking a risk with the silver work because I don’t know enough yet. I took a class over two Saturdays that gave me the courage to jump into it, but not enough knowledge to sustain the new habit. I’m so afraid of making a mistake (and with silver prices these days, it would likely be pretty expensive) that all my tools and pieces are sitting to the side while I mind-numbingly put together glass necklaces and bracelets.
I’ve realised this and now I have to rectify it. This weekend I’ll finish with the beads and next week I’ll begin the silver work. Wish me luck and fortunate mistakes.
Oh hell yes! Red glitter Schoolgirl mary janes from Pleaser, USA
I want.
To be more specific, I want to wear them as wedding shoes. I want I want I want, even though:
a) they clash horrifically with everything else I’ll be wearing;
b) they’re a tiiiiiiiiny bit too ridiculous even for our ridiculous wedding;
c) periodically throughout the reception, I’d randomly snap, “I would’ve killed for ‘tappa tappa tappa’!”
edited to add
As a nod to those friends and readers urging us arrange the details of our wedding to please ourselves: thank you, and thank you, and thank you, but have no fears on that front. Though I’m giving up my bouncy castle and my spangly shoes, and The Fella and I gave up our zombie cake, we gave them up for us.
For one reason or another, we decided that these elements don’t fit with our plans. But we have no question that the wedding day will reflect us, our taste, our humor, our silliness.
And! Our happiness and gratitude that our friends and loved ones embrace the silliness in us. Thank you.
As a bonus for those who are heartily sick of my wedding frippery, note that the final link uses “tappa tappa tappa” as a jumping-off point for a discussion of simplistic educational models. For those readers not thoroughly sick of my wedding frippery… oh, you will be.
(warning: boring wedding-related gushing ahead.)
This afternoon, I ordered My Actual Freaking Wedding Dress.
As always, I’m not superstitious, but I am a little -stitious, so if you’re my future husband, please don’t click through to see the dress in question My Actual Freaking Wedding Dress.
Click, click, click as fast as you can and check out these handmade purses. I met their designer Liz back at uni and was fortunate to find her (and her lovely work) through that wonder of the net, facebook. She is addictively fun and her bags are as well. I’m not telling you which one I want in hopes that it’ll still be there when I go place my order after the move.
In other news, I’m washing the gray and the red right out of my hair. I’ve been dying it the past two years and I always to defer to JM who likes red. Enough, I’m going back to my natural color and preference: dark brown. That’s what it’s growing in as (plus some, okay lots, of gray) so that’s what it’ll be. I’ll try to post a color photo tomorrow for my 365 self-portrait project over at flickr.
I got another wild hare (hair?) today and decided to see a movie in an honest to goodness theater. It’s been over a year since I went to see a film at the cinema and more than 10 years (before I got married) since I’ve seen one on my very own. The last movie I treated myself to was “Contact” so I decided it was high time to do it again. I saw “Burn After Reading” since JM would be more likely to forgive me than if I had seen the new James Bond flick. After spending $24 dollars on entry and a combo popcorn/drink I remembered why I don’t do this more often. Still, I laughed more than the six other people in the cinema and thoroughly enjoyed my little indulgence. Now go indulge yourself as well…
I may have found a wedding dress.
I’m not superstitious, but I am a little -stitious, so please: any and all readers who are future husbands of mine, I ask you to refrain from clicking through to read the rest of the entry and see the photo.
Am I being foolish? Yes, undeniably. Thank you!
Every week or two, I spend a few minutes idly browsing the local outlet of an enormous retailer, hoping to find a good pair of boots, a plain sweater, or a replacement bookbag. Along with the usual discounted or discontinued goods, they also offer returned items. Sometimes these returns are complete with monogram; sometimes the monogram is woefully and obviously mispelled.
And that is how, poking through the messenger bags and bookbags, I came thiiiiis close to buying a slate gray messenger bag embroidered with the intersection of sci-fi geek and grammar geek: Doctor Whom.
Evening fades into night. Rain spatters down on the windows of the bus cruising through the outskirts of town. Behind me, three young men mutter and laugh, their chatter punctuated with oneupsmanship and increasingly potent curses.
The “stop requested” light bleeps on. With minimal leavetaking, one of the swearing men alights from his seat and steps out into the rain. As he breezes past my seat, the flaccid leather hem of his coat brushes my calf.
Without moving my head, I glance out the window and take him in: a big slumping hulk of a boy, his rounded shoulders hunched under the too-tight black leather. Instead of floating around him in the windy night like the badass longcoat of an antihero, the coat droops off him, wet and ill-shaped.
One of his friends must be looking out the window, too, but he sees with younger eyes; he says “That’s an L.A. coat, man.”
His friend is unimpressed. “Huh?”
Gamely trying, the kid presses on. “A Los Angeles coat. Angel? You know? Angel?”
They ride the rest of the way in silence.
Elli
Elsa
