Cardigan or jacket?

I spent several minutes this morning trying to decide whether I should wear a cardigan or a jacket. Jackets are smarter, but I’m still not entirely sure that most of mine fit properly or look particularly good on me, whereas I definitely like how I look in cardis but worry that they don’t look particularly professional. In the end I decided just to wear a shawl instead, though it would probably have been better to wear a dress with slightly longer sleeves.

Shawl – Citron
Dress – East
Tights – Monsoon
Shoes – Camper

I wasn’t really that cold, though. And even though it wasn’t a particularly warm day, it still felt like spring; there are leaves on most of the trees now, and ducklings on the canal, and I am feeling a great deal better for it. Not 100%, but better than I have done for months, which is definitely progress.

Getting my groove back

I didn’t end up posting any outfits last week, because I was really struggling with depression and just getting dressed in something vaguely work-appropriate every morning was almost more than I could manage, let alone putting together interesting outfits and finding the energy to photograph them. (I found myself wishing I owned a boring black trouser suit, and was even eyeing boring suits up in M&S one lunchtime when a colleague came up and said hello, having spotted my violet coat across the shop.)

Fortunately my mood has lifted a bit today. I managed to walk into work this morning (last week I stuck to the bus for fear that if I tried walking I’d just end up sitting on the kerb and sobbing and never make it to the office) and it was starting to get light, and there were green shoots in the flowerbeds that looked as though they weren’t far off being snowdrops. I went out in the sunshine at lunchtime and even managed to feel a vague spark of enthusiasm for my job again. And even though my outfit wasn’t particularly exciting, I enjoyed wearing it enough that I took a photo when I got home.

Shawl – Citron
Dress – East
Boots – Duo

You can’t really see it in the picture, but I was wearing my lovely new Nova Steel shawl pin from Skein Queen, which I’m sure also helped to cheer me up.

Hopefully this week will continue to be better than last week was.

Mended

I haven’t worn this skirt since last year, because the back seam had come unstitched just below the zip and the end of the zip kept popping through. Which took about five minutes to fix, when I finally got round to it at the weekend. Why do I always put off mending?

Shawl – Citron
Jacket – Debenhams
Top – M&S
Skirt – charity shop
Boots – Duo

Short on inspiration

Today’s outfit was dull and safe and not quite warm enough, really, given that the weather has got colder again after yesterday’s surprisingly mild weather.

Shawl – Citron
Dress – East
Boots – Duo

Meanwhile I have given in and ordered the darker brown smart boots I’ve been eyeing up at Duo, in large part because these ones are fairly desperately in need of resoling and while I should get my black boots back soon I’m not keen on only having the option of black for a couple of weeks. I suppose I wouldn’t consider it at all odd to have three pairs of work shoes (in fact, I have considerably more than three pairs of work shoes), so it’s not really that unreasonable to have three pairs of boots when I just don’t wear shoes at all for about five months of the year…

Thrown together

I hadn’t really thought of putting my green and purple shawl with my purple and ice-blue print dress, but I think it worked OK. Well enough for a Monday when I was still feeling coldy and not particularly inspired, anyway.

Shawl – Citron
Dress – LK Bennett
Boots – Gabor

A new way to wear a shawl

I wanted to look smart today, as there was a possibility I might have to go to an important meeting (as it turned out I didn’t, I just had to put some figures together beforehand), so I went for my short purple dress and green jacket and then thought that the colours would look good with my Citron. I don’t really think my normal way of wearing shawls round my shoulders works with a jacket, though; they don’t sit nicely on top of collars and structured shoulders. On a whim I tried scrunching the shawl round my neck and wearing it as a scarf, which I think worked quite well; Citron is big and drapy enough that it looked like a proper scarf and not a Boy Scout-style neckerchief, and I pinned it together with a shawl pin which kept it in place just fine.

Shawl – Citron
Jacket – Jigsaw
Dress – Gap
Tights – M&S
Boots – Gabor

Take two

My office tends to be coolish in the morning, but has recently been getting very warm in the afternoons. This means that while the kind of layering that was needed in my old office is never appropriate, it’s generally a good thing to be able to adjust my outfit to take temperature variations into account.

In the morning, I was wearing this.

Shawl – Citron
Cardigan – clothes swap
Dress – East
Tights – M&S
Boots – Gabor

By the time I got back from lunch it was much too warm for the shawl, so I was glad the outfit worked just as well without it:

Necklace – East
Vest (under dress) – M&S

The necklace is one of a couple I picked up in the sale in East last week because I felt in need of something to brighten my outfits up when it’s too warm for a shawl or scarf. It’s quite heavy, but I do like it.

Also, I seem to be wearing cardigans a lot and am wondering whether I need more. Although I suspect I almost certainly don’t.

Muted

I didn’t consciously decide to wear a much more muted outfit than normal today, but I certainly ended up with one and it’s probably a fair reflection of how I feel; I’m definitely on the mend but with a hacking cough that woke me up several times in the night, so not at my sparkling best.

Still, I don’t think I quite looked as though I was in deep mourning. And I have Friday off so only one more day to go this week.

Shawl – Citron
Cardigan – clothes swap
Dress – M&S
Boots – Dune

Back in handknits

When I originally started posting pictures of my outfits to this blog, my intention was to show how I wore the things I’d knitted, and I think that for about six months pretty much everything I posted included something handknitted, usually a scarf or shawl. Then the weather got warmer and it was too hot for scarves and shawls, but I’d got into the habit of outfitblogging anyway so I kept on doing it. It was nice to be able to wear a shawl today and actually keep it on all day, though.

Shawl – Citron
Shawl pin – Spinning Forth
Dress – Gap
Tights – M&S
Shoes – Clarks

This is the first chance I’ve had to wear this shawl pin, which I bought a month or so ago. I love how simple it is, and the way it just hooks through the fabric of the shawl.

Onward and upward

It was much cooler this morning than it has been lately; the kind of August morning that always seems to say that autumn is just round the corner. I took advantage of the chill in the air to wear a scarf, and even though it warmed up later I managed to keep it on all morning. It felt like a lovely woolly comfort blanket, which was very soothing after spending yesterday evening refreshing Twitter and worrying about whether all my London friends were safe from the riots.

At least while I was doing that I managed to cast off all 738 stitches on my Citron, which is now blocking:

I did two extra pattern repeats to use up more of my yarn, and I’m glad I did (despite the huge number of stitches in the final ruffle) because I think it would have been too small as written. I’m blocking it very lightly as I don’t want to lose the ruffliness – I’ve put the straight edge on wires but just laid the rest flat without even pinning it.

Meanwhile, thanks to some helpful advice from Natalie I have ordered a pack of ball-point needles and a twin needle and am going to practice sewing on old t-shirts (of which I have many) to teach myself how to sewing with stretchy fabrics, and then I can try my hand at a jersey top which should be a much better and more flattering fit than the Market Blouse was. Onward and upward!