Quote for the Day: Food and Cheer and Song

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." ~~ Thorin Oakenshield, as quoted by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Wardrobe Update: All In Your Head

Spring here is a mythical season that's gone before you're sure it's arrived. It was way-minus on Valentine's Day, but we'll be getting out the summer clothes by Victoria Day in May. For the time in between, I've included everything from cowlneck sweaters to lightweight t-shirts.

Janice at The Vivienne Files used Salvador Dalí's Head of a Woman to create a wardrobe with a bit of pink, three years ago. I combined some of those ideas with her how-to-do-it post here, to find my own version.

Head of a Woman

Head of a Wardrobe

Interesting, maybe-vintage jacket I just thrifted

Read the rest here.

That white sweater, or, how do you start thinking you want something?

If you get it in your head that you want something, have you really come up with that idea yourself, or did you let someone plant it in your mind? And is that necessarily a bad thing, if the thing you want is useful and fills a need? Charlotte Mason did a lot of thinking about that.

This winter I seem to have majored on sweaters, which is fine. There was a point a few years ago when I didn't have even one cardigan sweater, mostly because they were making me feel old. I've thrifted a few knit and sweatshirt-type cardigans here and there, cycled them in and out. This winter I found a grey belted cardigan I like (it's a few posts back), and there are one or two others in my closet that I wear sometimes.

Recently I've been thinking about lighter colours, though. I was at an outlet store a few weeks ago, and I bought an off-white cotton mock-neck pullover (after not allowing the saleslady to push me into a pink one. I like pink, but I needed a plain colour that would Go With Things. I was channelling my inner Charlotte Mason that day for sure).  The Vivienne Files did a story about ways that someone could wear an ivory cardigan. I also found this 2019 post by Style Bee about her investment-quality cardigan.  I liked the idea of something buttoned-up and light-coloured, even though white cardigans (especially fuzzy ones) made me think of my great-grandma. But okay: v-neck, about five buttons, medium weight. I started keeping my eyes open on our thrift-store touring, but I didn't find much besides much-washed acrylic. Then I was doing a thrift shift, and had a few minutes to shop afterwards. Here's what I found: an off-white cotton cardigan, v-neck, five buttons, in like-new condition. It's not organic or lifetime-quality, but it's not dollar-discount-store either. 

So far I've worn it with a denim shirt (that doesn't get worn enough) and light-coloured cotton pants, and a white t-shirt (kind of copying Style Bee) and grey jeans. 

The question might be, whose idea was it that I wanted/needed a sweater-that-wasn't-a-pullover? Is it like looking at a blank space in the stairway, and mentally matching it up with a pair of pictures while you're walking past the art rack at Value Village? I don't think it's about trying to be something I'm not (ahem, I'm not Style Bee); I just wanted/needed something that filled in that gap, that didn't cost too much money, and that fit into a Conscious Closet. (I did buy the white t-shirt at Walmart, so I needed to balance things out.)

How do you trace out your ideas?

The long blog catch-up

So, yes, hello February. Like the groundhog, I'm coming out of our hole.

I think this is the longest blog hiatus I've ever taken in...fifteen years. (We started here in February 2005.) Although I don't have a 9 to 5 job, I do work at this and that, and the this and that seemed to wipe out blogging for the last while. 

I finished my Adult Ed courses early in December.

Then (aside from making cookies and stuff), I spent most of December working on a book project.

The current "other man" in my life is Pompey, as in Plutarch's Life Of. He's one of the few characters to earn a whole two terms of study in Charlotte Mason's schools (most just get one). Writing study notes for Pompey is like eating a foot-long sub instead of my usual six-inch. (We're Canadians. We still do not order subs in metric. Why's that?)

And then there has been thrift-store volunteering, books to read, places to go, and winter things. Not much snow shovelling here, though...at our former Treehouse, the driveway was a team effort and could take hours (depending on how much the city plow had added to nature's abundant gifts). Our townhouse has snow-clearing services, but occasionally you do want to clear off your space yourself.

Mr. Fixit and I have visited a few more antique markets and thrift stores around town than we usually do. This is partly so he can scout out electronics to fix, but also just for the fun of it, looking for household things, sometimes music or books. Or clothes. 

One day we went to an antiques place that had a vintage booth, and I left with a cowlneck sweater.

Purse from the Salvation Army store.

Artwork from Value Village.

Sweater and pants from the MCC store.

This white sweater is going to get a post of its own.

So what's new with you?