Periwinkle Birch

I'm nothing if not original. *snort*  Meet the Periwinkle Birch dress.  Which is exactly like the navy Birch dress.  Except, you know, periwinkle.  Which makes it totally different, right?  

I wanted another rayon dress in my summer rotation, and I loved my Rifle and Co. rayon dresses so much in the spring, I thought it would be nice to pick another colorway of the Birch fabric.  I felt that the darker dresses from my spring were out of place with my summer palette, and also I wanted to save them for next spring.  I find I don't always have two rotations in a row worth of wearing in me.

No construction notes, just a straight up Simplicity 1080 (redrafted somewhat for my specs).  I put on patch pockets because of the rayon.  I did have a little fight with the fabric during the cutting, and I do wonder if I'd like another inch on the length, but it is a fine dress and I'm pleased with it.

I really like the bright colors for summer.  And yes, I'm still in a cardigan and stockings and boots this morning, but I think I will be out of stockings by afternoon at least.

I keep fiddling with the back elastic width, and when I get it right, I don't remember to write it down, so I always have to start from scratch!  It is true that the placement does depend a lot on the fabric--rayon needs a tighter back vs. medium weight cotton or lawn, for example.

Ye ol' patch pocket.  I think this dress would go with my royal blue cardigan as well.  And you can see how different the fit is with my navy cardigan as against the horrid white one I wore yesterday.  I ended up swapping it out for the navy one in the morning.  They are exactly the same size and brand, and from the same line.  I don't get it.

Troopa boots again.  They still need a tiny bit of breaking in, particularly across the wide part of of the toe box, but otherwise, not too bad wearing.  They are all leather, which I like.

I remembered these pretty blue and silver earrings that matched the medium blue leaves in the dress perfectly.  I found the earrings last summer at CVS of all places.   Also back to my purple glasses--I just really like the shape of these frames.  I had stopped wearing them for a few weeks in favor of the pink pair because the stem was irritating one of my ears terribly, but it seems better now.  I'm noticing that I really can't not wear glasses most of the day now.  I can still see without them, and read if I have to, but I can tell my eyes are working really hard when I do.  I'm getting middle-aged I guess.

I forgot to mention in my little Twilight ramble yesterday that I'm listening to all the soundtracks again and I'm really enjoying them so much more now.  When the soundtracks first came out, there were only a handful of songs across all the albums that I really liked (and have been on regular rotation on my playlists since); I've been kind of casting around for something different to listen to lately, and decided to give all the albums another shot.  They are quite excellent and I love all the songs now.  They suit my current mood perfectly.

I watched Queen of the Desert yesterday and thought it was okay.  I have an academic interest in the topic, as I wrote my senior thesis on T.E. Lawrence and spent an intense nine months immersed in his life and writings.  I thought the film was very visually interesting, the costumes beautiful, and the soundtrack evocative, but overall the story is uneven.  I didn't buy the initial love story at.all, and I thought the movie was trying just a little too hard to be David O. Lean's famous movie on Lawrence (which is entertaining, but not very factual).   I also thought that a casual moviegoer would have a hard time following what was going on unless very familiar with the period and the characters in question.  I'm pretty familiar with it, and I still had a hard time making sense of the story arc and passage of time.  There is a lot of assumed knowledge, I think (and a couple of glaring historical errors).  Still, I'm glad I watched it, if for no other reason than Robert Pattinson's portrayal of Lawrence.  It is not his best performance, and he's only a minor character, since the film is primarily about Gertrude Bell, but I think Pattinson's portrayal is probably truer to how Lawrence actually was than Peter O'Toole's dashing hero of the big screen.  Lawrence remains an enigma.

Just the facts:

Perwinkle Birch dress: Rifle and Co. for Cotton+Steel rayon, Simplicity 1080, vintage bias tape, elastic

Cardigan: H&M

Stockings: O-socks via sock dreams

Boots: Troopa by Steve Madden via ebay

Earrings: CVS

Necklace: had since a child