Project 333: Summer Wrap

Today marks the last day of my summer rotation.  I confess, I'm thoroughly sick of all my clothes this season.  I'm ready to chuck all of them!  I remembered that I felt this way at the end of last summer, so I'm only purging a few pieces that I felt didn't work out this rotation.  

I am not a big fan of summer, but I'm especially ready for cooler weather this year.  It has been a hot and muggy summer, and the nice days we did have, I couldn't really open up the house because of all the road construction on the street.  The kids and I also have a pretty icky summer cold right now, so that is making me feel a bit boggy.  

Top left: chambray skirt, blue twill skirt, red twill skirt, railroad denim skirt

Bottom left: red cotton cardigan, light blue cotton cardigan, coral rayon cardigan

Left: turquoise gingham dress, Bandana rayon challis dress, Buttercup cotton dress

Middle: Art deco dress, Liberty #3 dress, Nike dress, Paintbrush dress

Right: Lily pad linen dress, Blueberry cotton lawn dress, White florals dress

Top right: Vintage florals blouse, Strawberry fields blouse, Liberty blouse, Bunny blouse, feedsack blouse

Bottom right: pink tshirt, green tshirt, red tshirt, white linen blouse

This was a fairly uneventful rotation for me.  I did swap a few things out early on (the Cherry Blossom dress and the Melody blouse just were not working for me), and added a couple of makes in July (the Paintbrush dress, the Lily pad linen dress, and the Blueberry dress), but otherwise, I had a fairly stable wardrobe this summer.  

A couple of wins: the white linen blouse was a big hit.  I felt great in it, got compliments every time I wore it, and it felt very "me."  My blue twill skirt was another winner, and I wore it often this summer.  My linen dresses were great (I have two more planned for next summer) and the Bandana rayon dress was a favorite--I was glad to wear it on Dormition this year.  

The surprise win was the Buttercup dress.  I ended up really liking this dress, and I think that it was a good fit on me.  It was a wonderful dress to wear for both Ascension and Transfiguration, both of which are "white" holidays in our church.  

Some meh stuff: I like the Art Deco dress in theory, but not on me.  I don't know why.  It is a gorgeous lawn fabric, with a lovely hand, and I like the print, but I just feel like I'm too old for it, or something.  Ditto for the turquoise gingham dress.  I got a lot of compliments whenever I wore it, and I think it was a flattering dress, but I just felt weird in it.  The white florals dress is another meh.  I really really love the print, but I have to conclude that it just isn't that flattering on me.  It is one of those prints that doesn't "read" well at a distance, and as a result, I think the color ends up reading a weird shade of lavender from afar, and it just doesn't do me any favors.

A loser: the chambray skirt.  I wore it quite a bit, but I never really did get the fit right, and it just didn't wear well over the season.  The back seam is continually pulling (something that isn't a problem in the twill or denim skirts on the same pattern, so I have think it is the fabric), and the waist band wants to roll over constantly, despite the petersham interfacing.  I'd like to make a different style of chambray skirt for next summer.  

I'm pretty happy overall with my separates, and while I'm thoroughly sick of my blouses at this point, I think a nice hibernation until next summer will be fine.  

I do wish I'd made the pockets on the Blueberry dress higher, and I might move them before next summer, but I have a hard time making myself do those sorts of pesky fixes.  I'll try to put that on my project list for spring, because right now, I don't want to look at any of this stuff.  

I think my takeaway from this summer is that I need more solids in my summer wardrobe.  I'm kind of getting beyond the phase of wanting print everything, and the prints I do want to wear, I'm pretty picky about.  I don't want novelty prints, I'm fussy about the types of florals I will wear, and I don't generally go for abstract/ikat type stuff.  I like my summer clothes loose but nicely fitted (i.e. not sloppy), and my skirts look best when they hit in the middle of my knee.  I ended up hemming up all my skirts this summer, and was much happier for it.

I did wear almost everything in my closet quite a lot this summer, so I guess I can count that as a win for the Project!  It is a little hard to assess it right now, because I'm so sick of it all, and also because I'm still struggling to find my sartorial self at 37.  I'll get there.

I'll talk about my fall rotation and sewing plans tomorrow!

Talking Tuesday: Light Between the Oceans #2

Another passage from The Light Between the Oceans today.  This passage reminded me a bit of some of my favorite bits from The English Patient (one quoted here).

"On clear summer days, Janus seems to stretch up right to its tiptoes: you'd swear it's higher out of the water at some times than at others, not just because of the rising and ebbing of the tide.  It can disappear altogether in rainstorms, disguised like a goddess in a Greek myth.  Or sea mists brew up: warm air heavy with salt crystals which obstruct the passage of the light.  If there are brushfires, the smoke can reach even this far out, carrying thick, sticky ash which tints the sunsets lavish red and gold, and coats the lantern-room glazing with grime.  For these reasons, the island needs the strongest, brightest of lights.

From the gallery, the horizon stretches forty miles.  It seems improbable to Tom that such endless space could exist in the same lifetime as the ground that was fought over a foot at a time only a handful of years ago, where men lost their lives for the sake of labeling a few muddy yards as "ours" instead of "theirs," only to have them snatched back a day later.  Perhaps the same labeling obsession caused cartographers to split this body of water into two oceans, even though it is impossible to touch an exact point at which their currents begin to differ.  Splitting.  Labeling.  Seeking out otherness.  Some things don't change."

~M.L. Stedman, The Light Between the Oceans.  (New York: Scriber and Sons, 2012), p. 51

I think what strikes me about this passage is how differently I think about these things than when I first read The English Patient. Even though I loved the lyricism of the passage, I think I didn't really understand what Ondaatje wrote about the cartography of the body, and how we carry where we've been with us over time.

Stedman is writing about the futility of labeling, of trying to contain land or sea in a word on a map.  I do think there is some truth to that, but I also think that, historically, people can belong to a land in a visceral way.  Most of the wars in history have been fought over tribal territorial squabbles--about which land belongs to which people, who goes where, who is the Other.  It is only recently that we fight wars in the name of esoteric ideals.

Talking Tuesday: The Light Between the Oceans

While traveling last month, I read The Light Between the Oceans.  It is a beautiful, haunting, heart-wrenching book.  There is so much to savor in the story, so many beautifully wrought descriptions of the ways of life, of grief, loss in wartime, of motherhood, and long term relationships.  I picked out a few passages that I liked and thought I would share them here over a few Talking Tuesday posts.

"He begins to shape his routine.  Regulations require that each Sunday he hoist the ensign and he does, first thing.  He raises it too when any "man o' war," as rules put it, passes the island.  He knows keepers who swear under their breath at the obligation, but Tom takes comfort from the orderliness of it.  It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization."

~M.L. Steadman, The Light Between the Oceans, (New York: Scribner and Sons, 2012), 35, emphasis mine.

Talking Tuesday: Houellebecq and the Consumer Self

I read excerpts from Michel Houellebecq's novel Submission sometime last year; my husband read the whole novel sometime in late winter or early spring and enjoyed it immensely. I think it is an important novel for the ways that it pokes at our fragile culture and brittle consumer self. 

I find myself reflecting on the modern self as primarily consumer a lot lately, as I work through my thoughts on Matthew B. Crawford, Jaron Lanier, and Charles Taylor. I dislike the idea that I am merely consumer: that I am nothing more than the sum total of my desires. I've said several times before that one of my goals in life is to recapture a premodern mindset, to thoroughly re-enchant my way of viewing the world.  If I'm to do that, I must order my passions with God's help, and learn a measure of content with the world as it is rather than what I wish it would be, or how clever advertising has made me feel it should be.

Theodore Dalrymple (a pen name) writes of Houllebecq's created world:

"In Houellebecq’s world people buy without need, want without real desire, and distract themselves without enjoyment. Their personal relations reflect this: they are shallow and no one is prepared to sacrifice his or her freedom, which is conceived of as the ability to seek the next distraction without let or hindrance from obligation to others. They are committed to nothing, and in such a world even art or cultural activity is just distraction on a marginally higher plane – though it is a natural law in this kind of society that the planes grow ever closer, ever more compressed.

For Houellebecq, the institution that best captures the nature of modern existence is the supermarket, in which people wander between stacked shelves making choices without discrimination or any real consequences, to the sound of banal but inescapable music. This music is like the leprous distilment that Claudius pours into the ear of Hamlet père as he sleeps in his garden once of an afternoon. The shoppers in the supermarket are not asleep, of course, but they are sleepwalking, or behaving as quasi-automata. At any rate, they are certainly not alert (most of them don’t even have a list of what they need, or think they need), and the drivelling music makes sure that they do not awake from their semi-slumber.

The whole of modern life is an existential supermarket, in which everyone makes life choices as if the choices were between very similar products, between Bonne Maman jam, say, and the supermarket’s own brand (probably made by the same manufacturer), in the belief that if they make the wrong choice it can simply be righted tomorrow by another choice. Life is but a series of moments and people are elementary particles (the title of a book by Houellebecq)....If you watch crowds shopping in any consumer society you cannot help but think that they represent the sated in search of the superfluous."

~Theodore Dalrymple, "Houellebecq and Call." The New English Review Blog, August 2016

Dalrymple goes on to discuss a bit about the economics of modern consumer society, and how our language is so informed by the realities of the modern consumer self.  He ends by stating that he does not seek status in labels or horsepower, but I think even that sort of side-steps the point: most of us in the West do not worry about whether there will be clothes on our backs, or food in our cupboards.  We have the economic leisure to worry about esoteric things at worst, existential things at best.  

Another of my stated goals (particularly for this blog) is to think about what it means to live in this hyper-consumer society in a simple way.  How to separate wants from needs.  How to live in a simple manner that leaves plenty of room for the spiritual life to flourish.  My experience of simple living has been hugely influenced by staying in monasteries like St. Herman of Alaska in Platina, CA, and also of living overseas in Russia, and two Habitat builds in Central Asia.  The conditions for that life are hard to replicate here, however, living as we do in great abundance and even ennui with such abundance.  I was always shopping when I lived in Russia, in part because that is how you live there: daily groceries, checking markets on the way to work for various needful things like soap and eggs that sometimes can't be found other places, and keeping eyes open in the garment stalls for a sweater or a pair of warm boots that might fit and replace something that is full of holes.  The accessibility of consumer goods is spotty, so when your sweater wears out, you can't be sure of finding an easy replacement.  I learned to keep my eyes open, even when I was just going to see a friend.  That habit has followed me here, where it serves me poorly.  

I've lately caught myself shopping either online or in stores simply because they are there, and I'm always kind of looking.  Looking for what, I don't know.  My closet is more than adequate, I make most of what I wear anyway, and I don't especially need anything ready-to-wear right now.  I think the mindless perusal is the pursuit of something that will make me feel better--shopping as anesthesia.  The clothing industry in particular is good about selling the idea that new clothing=happiness, and that the right dress is all that stands between me and a good state of mind.  Intellectually, I know that idea is total bollocks, but it still whispers in my ear enticingly.  

Talking Tuesday: God's Absence

I think it is not news to any regular reader of this blog that things have been difficult for a long time.  On many different levels.  I find myself continually coming to the end of my strength, and still having to get up and put one foot in front of the other.  I'm exhausted on so many levels--physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.  I'm not looking for pity, but rather just acknowledging reality, and trying to make peace with the ascesis of it.

That said, I was encouraged by this brief post from my dear friend yesterday.  In it, she writes:

"Where by God's will, by physical illness and exhaustion,

or by a season in life,

we may still be quite near to God, as in God is everywhere present,

filling all things,

but we may not sense God's presence,

we may, who were once sustained by His Presence in difficult afflictions,

later be cut off from the sense of His Presence, even when the situation gets

more difficult....

***

Met. Anthony Bloom writes of a woman 

who wrote him (she had cancer, was dying) that she was sustained

by His Presence, but later she only found God's absence

and her only prayer was not to try to create/fabricate a sense of God's

Presence when He choose to only give a sense of His absence to her."

~"Do Not Be Afraid" roosje {little rose} blog, August 8, 2016

It's not that I sense God is absent, precisely. I have plenty of personal examples of God's work in the mundane of daily life. I could tell you about finding lost things, about finding my way while lost on the road, about locating an affordable warm coat during a harsh Russian winter after weeks of finding nothing suitable for a good price. I could tell of children caught by guardian angels to avoid serious injury, of my own wakefulness in the night when a child is dangerously ill. I could tell of disasters avoided, and when they could not, of peace given in the midst of incredible storms, of the unmistakable knowledge of God's presence in a place, like a familiar scent in a room.

My friend reminded that even Christ felt abandoned on the cross, and cried out his agony. I find the events of Holy Week are never far from my mind, and I recall Psalms and passages from Job that remind me of what others have endured while following God.

Then Job answered and said:

“How long will you torment my soul,

And break me in pieces with words?

These ten times you have reproached me;

You are not ashamed that you have wronged me.[a]

And if indeed I have erred,

My error remains with me.

If indeed you exalt yourselves against me,

And plead my disgrace against me,

Know then that God has wronged me,

And has surrounded me with His net.

“If I cry out concerning wrong, I am not heard.

If I cry aloud, there is no justice.

He has fenced up my way, so that I cannot pass;

And He has set darkness in my paths.

He has stripped me of my glory,

And taken the crown from my head.

He breaks me down on every side,

And I am gone;

My hope He has uprooted like a tree.

He has also kindled His wrath against me,

And He counts me as one of His enemies.

His troops come together

And build up their road against me;

They encamp all around my tent.

“He has removed my brothers far from me,

And my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.

My relatives have failed,

And my close friends have forgotten me.

Those who dwell in my house, and my maidservants,

Count me as a stranger;

I am an alien in their sight.

I call my servant, but he gives no answer;

I beg him with my mouth.

My breath is offensive to my wife,

And I am repulsive to the children of my own body.

Even young children despise me;

I arise, and they speak against me.

All my close friends abhor me,

And those whom I love have turned against me.

My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh,

And I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

“Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,

For the hand of God has struck me!

Why do you persecute me as God does,

And are not satisfied with my flesh?

“Oh, that my words were written!

Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!

That they were engraved on a rock

With an iron pen and lead, forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

And He shall stand at last on the earth;

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,

That in my flesh I shall see God,

Whom I shall see for myself,

And my eyes shall behold, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me! ~Job 19:1-25 [emphasis mine]

What I love about this passage is not that Job laments all that has befallen him; rather that in the end, in the middle of immense suffering, he still praises God and His goodness. I think in the cultural context of America, it can be easy to get caught up in thinking that everything *should* be easy, or pain free, that being faithful means a life of ease and comfort. I know better, honestly, but sometimes I forget, given the constant cultural pounding my brain receives. It is good to remember that times of absence are useful in shaping me in some way, and to be reminded (forcibly sometimes) that I should not expect more from life than Christ himself.

I find that strangely comforting.

Musings upon homecoming

Apologies for the radio silence these last weeks.  We took our annual Midwest pilgrimage to visit my parents and sisters in Missouri, and then tacked on a short visit to see old friends in Iowa as well.  The week prior to our trip I was rather short on babysitting time, so I was squeezed to get everything done before we left.  Our trip was mostly good, except for the longish road trip portions, which were not.  (Would you believe the only photos I took were on the very last day, in the hotel and at a playground in Iowa?  My mother said she would send me copies of whatever she took during the Missouri leg) I'm grateful we had the chance to catch up with our friends--the fellowship will see me through the hungry months of sickness ahead.

The day and half back have been a flurry of unpacking, grocery-getting, school supply-ordering, school uniform-logo-ing (is that a word?), doctor's appointments, mail retrieval, phone call returns, and general madness.  I find myself in a somewhat contemplative state of mind as we begin the slow shift away from summer and toward the school year.

I went on a kind of internet-fast while we were away.  My husband checked out an ipad from his work to take along so that he could continue work on his ongoing Supreme Court cases, and I checked my e-mail about once a day, just to make sure nothing came up that needed attention.  I almost thought not to, but there were a few things that needed responding to before we returned home.

After the enforced technology fast, I find myself in a bit of an internet binge, mostly because I'm at loose ends at the moment (no excuses, but there it is).  I've been doing laundry almost non-stop since we got home (none of it folded or put away yet!) and trying to drive away the urge to purge everything in the house.  Summer always means a lot of extra clutter--pool towels constantly on the drying rack, along with swim suits, craft projects started and abandoned (but heaven help me if I try to throw it away!), glitter and books constantly on the floor, and children's drawings badly taped all over the walls (part of some elaborate fire station play about a month ago).

Yesterday I went around and tore down all the red paper fire buzzers and random assorted papers that had been tacked up all over the place.  It felt great (and none of the kids has noticed).  What with being away for our parish's feast day, and then leaving the following Saturday, we have about three weeks' worth of recycling and trash that need to go out next Monday; I can't wait.  The basement is just overflowing.  It feels like a maze.  Thankfully, I did get a thrift shop pick up shortly before we left, so at least the donation piles aren't too much at the moment.

I find August to be a weird time of breath-holding, waiting for the next thing to happen.  Birdie is scheduled to have a procedure at the hospital in two weeks that will involve an overnight stay.  I'm hoping it will give us some better information to more effectively treat her symptoms, because it has been a bad summer for her, health-wise.  We usually get a break in the middle of the summer, but this year we didn't.  (To be fair, May was uneventful, so perhaps I should think of it as our break).  We had to travel with a nebulizer and oral steroids, just in case; we've never done that in the summer time.

I'm scheduled to see my throat doctor later this afternoon; I'm hopeful that he will have some ideas of where to go from here, because I'm fresh out.  My insides feel like raw meat, and swallowing has been going particularly badly.

I find myself somewhat mentally fatigued.  I keep trying to get back to Crawford, and the article, but every time I do, my brain just shuts down and says, No.  I read a book on the trip (I'll blog about it on the next Yarn Along) that was very affecting, and I think I'm still trying to process it.  I'm worried about what might happen in this country after the election, whatever the outcome, given the charged atmosphere.  We've had a lot of protests here over the last few years, and while they have so far been peaceful, it is unnerving to have choppers overhead for days at a time.

But on to more cheerful things.  How's about fall sewing, hmm?  I don't have that much planned, actually.  Three dresses, and perhaps a skirt, depending.

I bought this dark teal fabric at Joann's in a clearance bin on our trip.  I've looked at it online several times, but never bought it because I wasn't sure about the colorway.  After being able to pet it in person, and put it up to my skin, I think it will work fine as a fall dress.

This is destined to be the Liberty #2 dress, and is a cotton lawn from the same Robert Kaufman London Calling fabric line as my other lawn dresses.  It is the same print, but different colorway of the Liberty #3 dress.

Finally, an Alexander Henry cotton that I bought on sale from Joann.com sometime in the spring, intending it for fall.  It is a little different from my usual florals, but I think it will make a fine fall dress.

I did some mindless accessory knitting on our trip, but am looking ahead to more substantial knitting soon.

The ruby Balance O-Wool is finally wound into balls and ready for swatching.

I picked up my L'Enveloppe as soon as I returned home, and am happy to be working on it again--it is a quite soothing knit, despite the seed stitch.

As ever, I continue to consider getting older, and how that is affecting me sartorially and otherwise.  I do wish things would just settle into something, but it seems like a shifty foggy cloud, never quite getting clear.  I suppose a nearly decade of babies and toddlers and chronic illness will do that to a person.

Well, there's August to be getting on with.  And Mount Washmore to scale.

Tally-ho!