We woke up to a grey chilly day yesterday. It had clearly been raining all night and a light rain was still coming down. Add to this that we only get about 9hrs of daylight right now (if you think that’s not bad, consider that for a “standard” white collar job with a 1hr lunch break and 8hr work day, the sun is rising as you walk head into work and setting before you walk out), and it it’s not very intense light at that, a cloudy day is a dim day, perfect for being lazy.
A properly lazy day requires lazy clothing – comfy and easy to louge around on couches and in armchairs. I’m not the sort who can do pajamas all day – this turns lazy into “blarg” and feeling kinda gross. (If you are the sort who can, more power to you).
It also needed to be warm (high in the low 50s F/ 12C) and colorful (grey outside, remember?). I realized the outfit is all handmade and spans the work of three people.
The sweater is from bulky 3ply handspun I did the first year I was in Spinzilla (all spindle-spun btw) using the popular pattern Owls. It doesn’t show well in the photo, but the green gets increasingly grey towards the top as I mixed in more and more angora and grey shetland. The green is Peruvian highland roving dyed by AwesomeE. We were going to dye it together, but we ran out of time (we slightly seriously underestimated how much wool two novices could get done in one day.) I just told her “green” and she came up with the perfect green – subtly shaded, with sections that lean toward blue or yellow but overall balanced. And bright enough to take the grey I was going to add to it.
I’m sure it’s not hard to see how a skirt covered in giant pink and purple flowers is a good antidote to a chilly rainy day. I realized yesterday that the skirt must be about 20 years old now. AwesomeE’s awesome mum made it, but not for me. It orignally belonged to AwesomeE, but I inherited it when she outgrew it. By “inherited” I mean eagerly ran off with it as soon as she was too tall to wear it. Unfortunately, there was never any risk that I would become too tall for it. So, 20 years later, a skirt that I’m pretty sure was expected to last a couple years at most is still here, if a bit thinner, cheering up a grey day.
Dude, I love that you still wear that skirt! 😀 It makes me happy that you’ve taken such good enough care of it that it’s still around.
We just got a bunch of handknit baby sweaters that my brother and I wore that were made, not for us, but for my mom’s cousins. Our baby will be the fifth baby to wear them! I love heirlooms, so I’m totally going to make him wear them at least once, even though the original wearers were obviously a lot shorter and a little rounder than he is.
I’m pretty much in denial that someday the skirt will die. The fabric has to be half it’s original thickness at this point.
It would be awesome if there were photos of all the babies in the sweaters – that would be a cool collage.
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