Up until a week or two ago, I hadn't done any serious knitting in months. Something about my insanely demanding job and freelance writing activities, combined with the 100-plus-degree weather here in the summers, made me put it on hold for a while.
But I plan on getting back into the swing of things. In fact, I've already started something -- as well as compiled a list of all the future projects I want to work on. I'll keep these items in my queue, whether it takes me a year, or five years, to get to them.
Whew! I should be busy for the rest of my life with all that!
First thing's first, though ... I have to finish this ...
... because it is a birthday present for my dear friend, Ms. KT. Happy birthday, KT!!! It's a Clapotis, the color of um, dirt -- yeah, that's right, dirt -- just what you wanted. ;-)
I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm nearly halfway finished, and I'll mail it to you as soon as I can!
Yesterday my boyfriend and I made sun jars using one of Lifehacker's tutorials.
Sun jars are solar-powered lights in frosted jars, so they charge up all day while the sun is out and then begin to glow after sunset.
I've wanted some of these things for a long time, ever since I saw them on ThinkGeek. Unfortunately, though, everywhere I looked online the jars ranged between $30 and $40 -- more than I could justify spending on outdoor whimsies.
And then I came across the Lifehacker tutorial, which you can find here. The assembly process is pretty straightforward, and we made our two in less than 30 minutes. In the end, they cost us about $11 each. I'm happy with how they turned out, and they give off a surprising amount of light.
A few weekends ago I went to one of my favorite clothing stores in Scottsdale -- a consignment boutique called My Sister's Closet.
The place is an answer to most women's prayers. They buy and sell "gently used" name-brand and designer clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. And I am telling you, this store is a gold mine -- provided that you never go in looking for a specific sort of item. You have to just be ready to see where the shopping trip takes you, so to speak.
I went on a Saturday morning -- in fact, the Saturday morning the shop was unveiling all their new fall inventory and everything in the store was discounted even more than usual. I figured it would be worth checking out.
When I arrived, I was immediately overwhelmed. Here was my beloved, usually casual consignment boutique swarming with 100+ crazed women.
For probably a solid 10 minutes all I really did was wander the store from one end to the other, back and forth, weaving in and out of people and watching in semi-horror the chaos that was taking place. I honestly had a woman lean in front of me and step on my foot in order to snatch a top she thought I might be reaching for. (I wasn't.)
After I finally snapped out of it, I got down to business. But while other girls were grabbing animal print blouses and coats that looked like carpet bags, I was perfectly fine sifting through whatever GAP articles had come in.
I should confirm that I am, by no means, a style snob, although, thanks to nearly three years in the Scottsdale area and a year and a half working for a fashion mag, I do, for better or for worse, now know Burberry from Tod's and Alaïa from Diane von Furstenburg. It's not like I studied the labels, it just kind of happened. Kind of like how when I used to work at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks, a byproduct of my job was that I learned the names of all the fish and could start telling the individual sharks apart from each other. Yeah, it's a little like that. But I digress ...
I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I love MSC both because I like nice things and I am frugal. Aren't a lot of other women out there, too? But on this most recent trip to the boutique, I rediscovered that there are different categories of frugality when it comes to Scottsdale women.
For example, I am not frugal in the kind of way that makes me feel obligated to buy a really hideous dress just because it's a marked-down Missoni. I don't consider buying an ugly, $1,000 article of designer clothing on sale for $200 to be coming out on top. I am more the kind of frugal that says, "Hey, isn't that the Banana Republic jacket I was looking at in the store window last year? Wow, it's only $17.50 here. I'm taking it."
Although there were women who staggered up to the checkout counter with both arms full, I walked away with only three things -- a white organic cotton cardigan knit in a lace pattern with a drawstring waist, as well as a light blue T-shirt with small flowers sewn on to one side of the neckline, both by J. Crew, and then a really lucky find: a black, sleeveless V-neck top with satin trim by Marciano by Guess.
The total cost of my purchases? $5 and change, thanks to some store credit I had after taking them some of my jeans at the beginning of the summer.
And on that note, happy Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week -- New York's annual celebration of all types of fashion, both beautiful and ugly.
