June snapshot

It's the middle of winter. Matariki is here and we've passed the winter solstice. I like to imagine that it's a teeny tiny bit lighter each evening, but suspect it's more likely wishful thinking at this early stage. It's just six months til Christmas, if you're into that sort of countdown. Whichever way I look at it, the year is racing by.

Here's a snapshot of June 2018 in the Weka household.

June snapshot

• Working four days a week is the BEST THING EVER! Three day weekends mean I get ALL the things done at home and productivity during my working week is also supercharged. Why didn't I know about this years ago?? #worklifebalance
• I've adopted my annual mix and match wardrobe of merino clothing. Layers and layers of warmth.
• Commuting by train is vastly different to bus travel. I'm still getting used to it.
• My sourdough starter is hibernating during these cold days. I've revisited some favourite bread recipes instead and have 7 grain loaf whirring in the breadmaker for dinner with leftovers tonight.
• My Welly on a Plate events are locked and loaded. Roll on August!
• I love reading but am not managing to read many (any) books these days. I'm enjoying binging on podcasts instead. Here's what on my current playlist:
• No Filter by Mia Freedman
• Modern Love: The Podcast
• BrainStuff from How Stuff Works
• Desert Island Discs
• We're binge watching Suits. There are eight seasons and 109 episodes to keep us occupied during winter. At this rate, I might not leave the house until spring arrives.

Merino clothing

I've always been one to feel the cold. Growing up, I was the one dressed in so many layers that I'd practically bounce if I had the misfortune to fall over - and still be cold. I learned from a young age to wear layers of clothing. Lots of them. I looked like I was ready to hit the slopes, even though I wouldn't even see snow for another couple of decades. I'd look at friends going out in the middle of winter with just a thin shirt under their school uniform and maybe their school jersey if they were forced to by their parents, whereas I had to wear several layers under my uniform and keep my legs warm with thick tights. How did they not freeze?

Things are a little better now that I'm older but I still feel the cold. My wardrobe still features endless layers of clothing that can be mixed and matched - with one main difference. Merino clothing is now my layering material of choice. It is thin, light, breathable and can be doubled or tripled up without me ending up looking like an overstuffed snowman. It doesn't need to be expensive either. I've stocked up on several basic pieces from Glassons and The Warehouse at a cost of around $20-25 each and am wearing them continuously lately. I wish I'd started doing it years ago! Without a doubt, Merino clothing is absolutely one of #myfavouritethings this winter.

Fashion crimes

We've been talking about fashion crimes in the office recently - not necessarily because of outfits particular people have worn but more as a general line of conversation. We asked ourselves the big question: "What is a fashion crime?" Urban Dictionary's definition of a fashion crime is simple and to the point: "wearing clothes that do not match or look altogether stupid".

The old adage of "blue and green should never be seen" seems well known but can go just as well for any colour combination, so long as the second colour is green or cream and still rhymes (white and cream?). Surely that can't be right? I distinctly remember hearing that wearing red and green makes you look like a Christmas tree, but is that true for any combination?

We brainstormed a few more: double denim (especially double blue or double black), double leathers (unless you're immediately about to hop onto a motorbike), non-matching handbag and shoes, short shorts on people who are obviously not designed to wear short shorts (most people), mixing metals when wearing jewellery (gold and silver etc), brown and black, mixed patterns and prints (checks, stripes, different florals etc), red and pink, redheads wearing red (or pink), socks or stockings with open toe shoes ... the list went on.

But apparently fashion rules are made to be broken, as these examples show. That's when our resident office clown decided to put this theory to the test. She promised to turn up to work the next Friday committing as many fashion crimes as she possibly could while wearing one outfit. Then, we'd watch people's reactions and see if anyone called the fashion police.

She arrived at work in a blue denim jacket with tight black jeans, a patterned scarf (which is actually a dress) over a horizontally striped top, black suede high heeled boots with frilly white ankle socks that left a gap between the bottom of her jeans and shoes, then finished off the ensemble with a yellow smock and a brown belt.

How did she look? Strangely, quite fabulous. It would seem that certain people can get away with committing fashion crimes while barely raising an eyebrow. We didn't even take a photo as there was simply nothing to report - she even received compliments! I guess it's back to the fashion crime drawing board. Clearly, the rules don't apply to everyone.

Other people's problems

Someone once told me that other people's problems are just that.

The problem is, some people don't have a problem with making their problems yours!

I wonder if this t-shirt is for real? I'm sure it would be a bestseller!

Shoe fetish

Apparently there is something about women and shoes that go together like peas and carrots. As I write this, I am barefoot and my shoes are discarded somewhere on the floor with no feet in them - just how I like them to be. But for some people (not just women), shoes are as coveted as diamonds or riches in almost fetish proportions.

A couple of months ago, a friend posted this message on Facebook:

It's a start... 35 shoes (depending on the style - high & low heels, sizes 7-1/2 to 8-1/2) looking for a new owner for free, some even not worn & others less than 5 times, good condition. If you're keen, let me know before next weekend or else they will go to Sally! I'm shoe size 8.

A start?? I don't own anywhere near that number of shoes, let alone have that many 'spare' to give away! We didn't realise at the time that our friend was planning to move overseas, hence 'making a start'. She is a very stylish woman and some of the shoes she was giving away were exquisite - we're not talking about $10 second hand shoes from Trade Me here. I'm not sure how many more donations it took before she had culled enough to move overseas, but she said she would still be taking "quite a few" with her.

Recently, a colleague spotted a shoe rack for sale that holds up to 30 pairs of shoes. I could see her doing a mental count in her head to check whether she would need one rack or two. She thought one might do for now. Besides, "I don't have to keep all my shoes in the same rack. Some of them, like my boots, won't fit so they'll just stay in the wardrobe." However, she was adamant that she was long overdue buying a decent shoe rack to protect her precious vessels from harm. Just look at the tragedy that struck some of Imelda Marcos' shoe collection recently. Oh, the horror!

Where do you sit on the shoe fetish scale?

Iron maiden

Ahh, Sunday. A day of rest and tackling things left undone during the week (housework, study). But not before coffee and the Sunday papers. In today's Sunday magazine, there was a story in the grooming section called Throw down your irons, a reprint of The tyranny of the iron by Seth Stevenson. With a title like that, it naturally grabbed my attention and I found myself nodding my way through this tongue-in-cheek piece that actually makes a heck of a lot of sense.

For me, ironing falls in the 'should' category. I grew up believing I 'should' iron clothes because that's what my mother spent hours doing. Clearly it wasn't an activity she enjoyed because all it took was for the dreaded ironing board to be set up in the kitchen or corner of the lounge and suddenly a dark cloud would descend over the entire household. Everything became a chore and nothing was funny while school uniforms, shirts, sheets, hankies and other items of clothing were being subjected to subversive heat (the behaviour of some even resulted in steam!), with Mum shackled to the wall by a frayed power cord that she took care to dance gingerly around. Thankfully she never ironed underwear like I've heard some people from her generation and before did, but pretty much everything else made it into the massive ironing basket, ready for regular heat torture that we all had to endure as a result. She was glad to offload some of this endless task once we were old enough to start ironing for ourselves. It was then that I decided there had to be a way around this.

While I was at secondary school and everybody was starting to take on part-time or odd jobs for pocket money, one friend would go up the road every weekend and get paid $5 an hour to iron her way through a young family's laundry basket. In those days, $5 was 'good' money and sometimes she would be ironing for three or four hours. It sounded like purgatory to me. No thanks.

Seriously, who irons these days? I openly admit that I don't actually own an iron myself and I think the last time I ironed something was about four years ago. I can't be certain of this, but do remembering ironing my ball dress once, so that makes the timing about right. I make sure I buy clothes that don't need ironing. Those that do, I take care to hang in shape on the clothes line and hang them up as soon as I can after they are dry. Business shirts? I don't wear them. It works for me.

It could be worse. A friend reported that her pre-schooler had asked her kindy teacher what this toy in the Wendy house was - she had never seen one before and didn't know how to play with it!

Do you still iron?

Three little words

A while ago, a colleague met me in town for a working lunch. As we walked back to her car, we continued chatting in the street as people hurried by on a cold day. Suddenly, mid-conversation, my colleague called out to one particular woman. "Excuse me ..." The woman turned around and then my colleague uttered three little words: "You look gorgeous."  And she did. Naturally, being from Wellington, she was dressed all in black but she did look stunning. I hadn't noticed her at all but my colleague, herself quite a stylish dresser, did and took her observation one step further.

The woman seemed really surprised. "Thank you!" she gasped, clearly shocked and thrilled all at once. She walked away with a straighter stride and a huge grin - and all it took was three little words from a stranger.

My colleague also noticed the look on my face. "Well, she did look gorgeous," she repeated to me. I agreed but realised that I didn't think I'd ever performed the simple act that clearly made this woman's day: complimenting a stranger. It seems so easy, so why don't we do it more often? Is it because we get so caught up in our own worlds that we don't notice those around us? Or do you think it could be because we kiwis tend to stick to ourselves and our inherent reservedness stops us from vocalising some of the things we should?

The new black

Apart from waiting for an impending storm, it seems to have been a slow news day as this story made it to the front page of the Dompost today. However, it certainly is true of Wellington: we seem to be the black fashion capital. Just take a look around you on any given day and you’ll probably find yourself swimming in a sea of black. I was just thinking a short while ago about how refreshing it is to see colourful dresses in shops for summer. It will be interesting to see if anyone is actually wearing them over the next few months.

I rarely wear all black but it is usually part of my daily ensemble, even though I make a conscious effort to incorporate some colour every day. In my younger days, I had a few LBDs that looked amazing and constantly made it onto the stage for band gigs. *sigh* Those were the days! Someone recently commented on what I was wearing that day: “Ooh, another lovely purple skirt!” (Of course, it was paired with a long sleeve black top and scarf.) I did a quick mental inventory of the contents of my wardrobe: black, black and white, black, purple, white, purple and white, blue, black, purple, black, red, white and black items of clothing.

Not being a shoe person, I have just a few basic pairs. Guess what colour they all are? Hmm. Boring? Perhaps. Practical? Yes. Interchangeable? Definitely. But I started to see a definite pattern ... sure, it's fun to occasionally do a 'black out for the All Blacks' kind of day, but every day?

Years ago, I remember meeting a friend in town the day after arriving back in New Zealand following a month-long trip to Italy. As I stood at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change, I was struck by how 'scruffy' and bland everybody looked – especially the men. Europeans certainly know how to dress stylishly. Black has its place, but not all day, every day.

What's your verdict on wearing black? If we ever manage to lose our fascination with it, what do you think the new black would be?

The trouble with socks

I have come to realise something: socks are evil, manipulative time thieves that exist simply to taunt us at washing time. Harsh words, I know, but hear me out. Sure, they look innocent enough and appear charming at first glance, offering to keep our extremeties warm and cosy and protect our cold, tired feet from the elements and shoes. But think about your actions next time you do a load of washing and you might come to agree with me.

I am convinced that I spend a disproportionate amount of housework time finding, hanging, matching and balling socks compared to any other laundry task. Most other items of clothing are more considerate than the humble sock in that they are presented as a self-contained unit. Think about trousers, t-shirts, or even pantyhose and stockings; they don't rely on a companion to be useful. Dresses are particularly amiable ensembles, containing all the essentials for the top AND bottom part of an outfit. I probably makes things more difficult for myself by only wearing black socks that I wash inside out, but I swear that washing machines the world over find it hilarious to eat one sock per load and/or swap it for another that looks similar but is not quite the same. Or perhaps they just share fetishes for black socks?

I'm not the first person to blog about sock dramas; I shudder when I imagine the ongoing nightmare that would ensue if required to keep socks for a whole family in check! It would be enough to turn odd socks into a fashion statement, something which someone from my student days used to insist on doing. She was miffed when someone accused her of wearing a matching pair one day and huffily pointed out that they were in fact dark blue and dark purple respectively!

I remember seeing a Dragons' Den-type show years ago where someone proposed commercially developing little sock clips that would keep pairs together in the wash and then hang straight on the line. No-one took it up, which shocked me as I thought it was the most practical, ingenious invention presented that day. Mind you, most of the dragons were men ...

I also knew someone years ago whose household would regularly hold a sock amnesty, whereby everyone living there would deposit their odd socks in the middle of the floor and pairs were matched, returned or retrieved. Actually, her flatmates would hold these; she was an Order Muppet and declared that none of her socks were missing or mismatched.

Do you have sock dramas, or have you found a sock solution that prevents sock stress?

Where do you see yourself in 20 years?

The adorable Jane Yee is on holiday this week and has lined up a series of guest bloggers to populate The Girls' Guide in her absence. The first one, posted Louisa Eades, has got off to a roaring start. The dreadful 80s photo on The ghost of twentysomething's future sucked me in much the same way as watching the proverbial car crash: you can't bear to look at it directly, but somehow you can't resist sneaking another peak. This photo is the real thing, and not some 'retro' 80s dress-up imitated a decade or two later.

The questions were asked: Where do you see yourself in 20 years? What outfit will you look back upon one day and wince? And what are your three essential items?

Gosh, sometimes I don't know where I will be in 20 days or even 20 minutes! Despite the best laid plans in my teens and twenties, I never saw myself where I am today, or even where I will be tomorrow. My career and personal life are vastly different to what I would ever have imagined. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just how things are. I still can't see what's around the next corner of this rollercoaster track that is my life and am learning to tolerate this. Sometimes it bothers me more than others (today, very much so).

I "grew up" very young and was incredibly focused during my twenties, working long and hard on developing my career, undertaking further education, and building long-term financial independence. My personal life, hopes and dreams went on hold (or out the window entirely) as a result and I realised a couple of years ago that I needed so make some big changes; things looked good for me from the outside looking in, but I certainly was neither happy nor fulfilled. However, I never saw myself developing Peter Pan syndrome once I hit my thirties; I really don't know what I want to do when I grow up! This article is great: Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

As for a wince-worthy outfit from my past ... well, I was an 80s kid, but thankfully young enough to escape the biggest of those fashion crimes. We had to sew a skirt of some sort in 3rd form clothing; I made an incredibly stylish (for 1988!) red corduroy bubble skirt, which never saw the light of day outside the clothing classroom.

And my three essential items? Sadly, it's my keys, wallet, and mobile phone (although this one is out of necessity; by choice, it would be my iPod or my MacBook Pro).

So, where do you see yourself in 20 years? Are you brave enough to confess a cringe-worthy outfit? And what three items can you not do without at this stage in your life?

Clothing prize pool

Today's post is brought to you by ... Export Gold. I'm not a beer drinker or even an alcohol drinker generally. My brother brews beer for a boutique brewery and is at New Zealand's Brewnz Awards as I post this. However, today I'm happy to sing the praises of Export Gold because I've scooped another prize pool. My sweetie suggested I join their online database like he had, and somehow my membership came up trumps. Again. ;-)

I've won a range of winter clothing, including a jacket, puffer vest, hoodie, beanie, and t-shirt. The clothing is predominantly black with small, stylish insignia - not cringe-worthy at all. Thanks, Export Gold - and cheers!

Clothing bin

As I was sorting out some old clothes yesterday, ready for another delivery to the clothing bin, I came across a couple of items from yonder years. Surprisingly, they have survived being packed up (and probably unpacked) several times this past decade and merely transported from one place to another before resting, once again, in my bottom drawer. It's unlikely I will wear most of them again. So why do I keep them?

In my classroom teaching days, I mostly taught children aged 7-10 years, many of them budding fashionistas (of which I am not) and all with opinions. About everything. As the children's age decreased, their opinions were more freely forthcoming. About everything.

Certain pieces of clothing brought back memories of comments from my junior fashion police. There was always the daily watch for things like earrings ("I like the earrings you are wearing today better than yesterday's ones but, please, don't wear the smiley faces again"), hair styles ("You should wear pigtails more often, then you'll look like one of us" - lol!) and other accessories ("I liked that ring when you first bought it, but don't you have any others?").

Here is a selection of comments about various pieces of clothing from my teaching wardrobe, directly from the mouths of the babes. Every comment was made in a excited tone of genuine wonder, as though they were making some great discovery and couldn't wait to share it with me. Lucky me!

• On a cream-coloured crochet top: "Oh, my mother has a tablecloth just like that!"
• On a blue mini-skirt with a large daisy print: "That is such an ugly skirt, but it really suits you." (When asked for clarification, she pointed out that "I really hate the material, but you look so good in it". Still not convinced!)
• On a deep red shirt over dark green jeans: "You look like a Christmas tree today!"
• On a day when three teachers inadvertently wore baggy white shirts over blue jeans: "Do you all have to wear the same clothes on Fridays?"
• On a polar fleece top: "You look just like Mr Young!" (Large, male principal, who indeed had a top made of polar fleece but in a totally different colour and style, ie not resembling mine in the slightest!)
• And the clincher, when wearing a simple skirt and top with boots: "Why do you look nice today? Is it because we're going to a funeral?"

Anyone else up for a backhanded compliment? Surely I can't be the only victim of such a harsh fashion commentary by littlies?

Buy a dress

We have a ball to go to next weekend and, not surprisingly, I had nothing to wear to it. I fixed that today: I bought a dress. A ball dress from one of my favourite clothing stores, Staxs.

I also did what I hate; I was out shopping for a mattress with my sweetie, and we stopped for lunch. We just happened to be in a shopping mall, and I decided that now was the time to look for a ball dress. He just happened to be there with me, so I dragged him along. Now, you need to realise that both of us hate shopping, but I've always genuinely felt sorry for the menfolk who are made to warm the seats by the changing rooms in women's clothing stores and give their opinion. I think everyone realises that their opinion is always the wrong one, but I did that today and entirely without meaning to.

Anyway, back to my dress. Here's a picture of it. I love the cut of Staxs clothing; it is absolutely timeless and the Staxs dresses I've bought in the past have lasted me well. I've never worn a halter neck dress before, so that will take some getting used to. It is beautifully boned so will hopefully stay up on its own(!). There's a brooch-type thing in the middle, which my sweetie doesn't like, but this was all part of the changing room negotiating; he liked the colour and style, and I was just happy to have something fit and look good. We'll decide about the brooch in the lead-up to the ball next week.

So that's goal #65 - buy a dress. I'm really looking forward to next week and goal #29 - dance at a formal ball. And now Cinderella has something to wear!