Pink and Blue

In silhouette, this is almost exactly the same outfit I wore yesterday. A loose, flowy top over a pencil skirt, with low sandals. the skirt is a variant of the Talbot's dark denim skirt I bought a few weeks ago, this time in a pale rose. Finally, a denim skirt I can love. I would have bought it in red also, but that sold out very quickly. The top is Boden, a rayon crepe in shades of blue to honor my manicure, and the aqua shoes are Miz Mooz. I also kind of want them in every color - pink! cognac! 

That blurry, overexposed image was the best of seven photos, seriously. Here's a better pic of the shoes and their wacky snake-ish leather. They are on sale at Zulily if you are interested - better than Amazon!

Miz Mooz Papaya

 

Linen and Lace

Huh. I guess I forgot to publish this. Pretend it is July 11th, OK?

It looks like I'll be wearing blue all week - I certainly have a gracious plenty of it. I had thought to wear a white button-front shirt with the navy lace skirt, but when I tried it on, I realized (again) that I just don't like them. To my mind, "crisp" means stiff, and because they're so fitted they pit out really quickly (TMI?). I wore a nice blousey linen top instead.

I have on my turquoise necklace and earrings, and my cool new Everybody (by B Z Moda) sandals.

I loooove them. I bought them at Shoe Metro where they were insanely marked down. The leather is very soft and smooth, the back zipper doesn't even tickle, and the little heel is just right. I think they will look nice with pants too.

My skinny ankles are paying off this year, as there are so many mid-heel sandals with ankle straps, which look good (she said modestly) on my feet.  In addition to pleasing my ego, ankle straps make sandals feel very secure. My narrow heels mean I tend to walk out of or at least flop around in my shoes.

Wish Fulfillment

This top was one of the very first things I pinned to a Pinterest board. I bought it last week when it went on sale, and that makes the satisfaction I feel even sweeter. 

Vince Camuto rose print top from Lord and Taylor, blue Halogen skirt via eBay, Arturo Chiang sandals. The really brilliant thing about the top is that it contains red, black blue and even a forest green, so it is really interesting visually (depth) and will go with everything.

Matching manicure:

I brought a short-sleeved, red knit cardigan to throw on in the office AC.

Now I feel that I must stop shopping. I don't even mean just PURCHASING, but browsing, stalking, considering, watching. My eyes and my wallet need a break.

As I wrote this I knew I was lying. I'm just a girl whose intentions are good.
Still, you'll be seeing new things from my closet and new combinations of things I don't wear often enough.

Cute? Or Flattering?

I am generally more entertained by commercials than the show I am purportedly watching. When I first saw those A T & T commercials with the little kids (especially the one where a girl pretends to be a werewolf), I fell off my chair laughing. 


A clever commercial in rotation now is the "X or Y" commercial from Ford, where the car owners consider that AND is better than OR. My favorite is the police that protect OR serve. "Hey, stop right there! Can we get you something to eat! We have a nice sea bass with rice or roasted vegetables!"

Hee hee. Oh, all right, I'm easily amused, but this made me think of yesterday's outfit (no picture, sorry), which was definitely cute. But was it flattering? All the pieces were cute: pink linen jacket, a tank in navy and pinks, and a raspberry pencil skirt. The jacket is styled like a denim jacket (seen here with a dress):

 

That pale pink is a good color on me and there is pretty embroidery inside the cuffs. But is it flattering? It is a little boxy, and the wrinkly nature of linen mixed with denim jacket styling means lots of rumpling around the placket, pockets, etc. The jacket construction means it is impossible to alter as well, so I can't nip in the waist a bit. And for me, having a waist is EVERYTHING.

Sometimes it feels like someone is moving the goalposts. What kind of world do we live in where cute is not enough!!! Ahem.

This morning, I cast a stern glance at this combination:

Talbots swishy skirt, Lord and Taylor cardigan, Kenneth Cole sandals. Now, I have been stopped by strangers on the street complimenting these shoes, and their lightness certainly suits the airy fabrics I am wearing. Better than these shoes:   

But the longer leg (because of the three inch heel) is more flattering than the perfectly flat sandal.

So. Cute? Or flattering?

Tablet Envy

I spent a lot of the conference wishing I had my own tablet. Everyone seemed to have one, and they looked so useful and convenient.  Also, because I use my phone for everything, I fear I'm wearing it out faster than the library will be willing to replace it. Their lifecycle is every two years, and we're only a year into it.

I also shudder to think how much easier shopping will be on a tablet. Online shopping is waaayyy too easy. If I had to go to a store every time I wanted new shoes, I would have many fewer pairs. And if I had fewer shoes, I might have more money to spend on a tablet. Huh. Maybe in the fall, they aren't that expensive.

Here's what I wore on Wednesday. Some old favorites; the brown linen pants, the blindingly white denim jacket, plus cheerful yellow Miz Mooz sandals that make me three inches taller, and an eight dollar yellow Ann Taylor top that you can't really see.

It's bright yellow and striped!

Ann Taylor has been very good to me lately. They have lovely colors and excellent sales, and their tops and dresses suit my figure challenges. I've never found pants I liked there, but in the last month I've bought three tops and a dress for great prices. I'm watching a drapey orange crepe dress, but it is still over $90 and I can't pull the trigger yet.

We had our usual community fun on the Fourth by walking in the parade, and this is what we wore!

Check out Heather getting into her Lady Liberty costume in the background. Last year it was the temperature of the sun, and I went home afterwards and lay on the floor with a bag of frozen peas on my head, but this year it was perfect: breezy and sunny.

Next year we will have some folks dress up as Kindles and iPads and iPhones and show the community all the ways that you can read.


"What a fascinating modern age we live in."
- Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander -
 

Conference Fatigue

We just wrapped up the 2013 ALA Conference here in Chicago, and I have a lingering headache that is a result of information overload and the general noise and hoopla of 25,000 excited librarians roaming cavernous McCormick Place.

This conference is never as much FUN as PLA, mostly because it is so big and broad-based that it has to be held in New York, Miami or Chicago, three cities that are generally tiring and hot at the end of June. We were lucky to have cooler weather while the rest of the country is suffering massive heatwaves, and of course, having the conference in town means you can sleep in your own bed at night.

Not to mention having your own closet to choose from.  I wore pants for two days, and was glad not to have bare legs in the cool outdoors and the AC indoors, but on Sunday I dressed up a bit and wore my new top from Ann Taylor.

It's a double layer of chiffon in the body, and a single layer in the sleeves; one of those tops in which you feel very girly. The skirt was an eBay purchase, a Halogen ponte skirt, that is really more green/turquoise than the aqua I see on my screen. It is fairly short (or at least felt that way), but since it is very stretchy, it doesn't ride up when I sit down. The shoes are my Earthies, which make me nice and tall, but have great arch support for walking around on concrete floors all day.

The conference played out for me on a few themes. The first was measurement. Libraries everywhere are looking for more sophisticated and concrete output measures as they see their users embracing digital services (hard to quantify) AND find themselves having to justify their worth to various authorities. So, I went to programs measuring summer reading club effects, surveying users, the LJ stars and how to use the data for evaluation and planning.

STEM and MAKE were two very popular words this year, as libraries celebrate the DIY culture, and often combine this kind of programming with emphasizing science and math literacy. I went to several programs filled with enthusiastic youth librarians and older folks like me trying to reframe our thoughts and history with these subjects. Most of my generation came to public libraries because we were humanities majors, not science and math people. I'm glad to say we are in our third year of a large Science Expo, and it is only going to grow and spin off into little maker groups this fall. Mark Frauenfeld was truly exciting and infectious as he spoke about the last 100 years (mentioning Hugo Gernsback to my joy!) of making and creating at an amateur level, and how the tech revolution had inspired thousands of people to get back down to their basement with new tools.

My personal third track was leadership, and becoming a more helpful and supportive administrator and manager. I've never thought I was a born leader or even a very empathetic person, but I can learn, and I've had great examples to follow. In this vein I attended programs on organizational change and community engagement and plain old leadership.

Some of my favorite quotes or thoughts were:

"Librarians teach compassion."  (Alice Walker)

"Libraries have rebranded themselves as the technology hub of their community." (Lee Rainie)

"Making is not a solitary activity; it is father/daughter, husband/wife, expert/amateur, it is collaborative." (Mark Frauenfeld)

"Every institution in this country has lost trust in this generation - church,  government, banks - except for libraries." (Lee Rainie)

And this slide, illustrating a classic "perilous" leader:

Photo by Charles Tasnadi, 1926-2008

 

Just Pretty

Vanity, thy name is Roberta. I couldn't stop myself from looking in the mirror this morning and saying, "Oooh, pretty!"

It's the gold shoes. They're so princessy.