Putting the Cart Before the Horse

I spend a lot of time window shopping online (I know, you're stunned), so I thought I would collate everything I have in various carts and see what it amounts to. Then I sorted the list in various ways; by type, by store. I am omitting the dozens of things that i am watching on Ebay, or we would be here all day, and Sundance doesn't save your items in a cart more than a few days.

Leather and fleece boots (L. L. Bean)
Gray lace dress (Garnet Hill)
Gray Eileen Fisher wool dress (Garnet Hill) 
Red shirttail cashmere sweater (Garnet Hill)
Red polka-dot sweater (Kohl's)
Two Dana Buchman tanks (Kohl's)
Black Lysse leggings (Macy's)
Large Sakroots travel tote (Macy's, and it is ADORABLE)
Long bright yellow cardigan (Talbot's)
Pine green work trousers (Talbot's)
Leopard calf-hair pumps (two styles, Talbot's)
Navy pumps (Amazon)
Snakeskin pumps (Amazon)
Leopard wedges (Amazon) 
Black polka-dot pumps (Amazon)
Born shearling moto boots (Amazon)
Grey Miz Mooz tall boots (Amazon)
Leopard calf-hair Donald Pliner pumps (Amazon)
Red ankle boots (Amazon, and they have been in that cart at least a year)
Three leather/bead bracelets (Amazon)
Ocean blue avant-garde sweater (Peruvian Connection)
Lace tee (Jones New York)
Yellow-green straight leg jeans (Jones New York)
Caramel drape-neck top (Jones New York)
Bottle green leather jacket (Nordstrom)
Embellished grey cashmere sweater (Nordstrom)
2 pairs of winter boots (6PM)
Winter walking shoes (6PM)

There is some overlap with my Pinterest boards, but less than I thought. The items in the carts are things I'm seriously considering, and I'm testing to see if my desire for them will last. Pinterest is also very useful for the companies that won't save my cart info, like Sundance, or for items where I just love the concept. I'm probably not actually going to buy a Vivienne Westwood coat.

34 items that I lovingly selected and put aside for a future purchase! Why then, when I actually buy something, do I generally not go back to these carts and purchase some of these items? 

1. The cart piles up and equals $400, and I can't bring myself to either spend that much or choose only one or two items from the group.
2. I discover something somewhere else (often eBay), buy it, and figure I can't then afford the lovely things lingering in online baskets (though Amazon will remember them forever, apparently). 
3. The hope/certainty that if I wait long enough, those things will go down in price. 
4. I look at my stuffed closets and 40 pairs of boots and I know I don't need anything more ever, for Heaven's sake, Roberta!
5. I review the carts and think the items don't really jive with my style goals. For example, I want to buy some pretty, graceful tunics, yet there aren't any in the carts. Hmmm. Apparently I have goals and then I also have GOALS.

 And then, hey, it's Friday and I haven't posted a single outfit photo!

I am loving grey lately and want to wear it every day. The red beaded necklace and bracelet are new via Ebay, and I love the grandiose scale of the links.

You can't really see the chain behind my neck, but it is black burnished metal - also good-sized links. Below is a more true rendition of the color. The little red beads are quite sparkly.

 
 
 

A Rich Weekend, Part Two

The Vivienne Files has ten rules for subtracting ten years on her blog, beginning with:

1.  Take an interest in current events, in fashion, yes, but also in art, music, food and decor.  Stay connected!

The annual Chicago Humanities Festival gives me this opportunity in bulk every year, by offering dozens of great talks and performances at cheap as chips prices. This past weekend I went to two.

Why is Moby Dick such an entrancing subject for filmmakers and other visual artists? This was the key idea for a program/performance by Blair Thomas, who was (among other ventures) a founder of the Redmoon Theater and now runs his own puppet theater in Chicago. He has been workshopping sections from the novel for years. He uses shadow puppets, Bunraku, oversize floating artifacts, human actors, and musicians. The performance can be very intimate and very large and physical; furniture and performers on wires and ropes, being flung about the stage. You can see wonderful images at his website, blairthomas.org.

Mr. Thomas gave a short performance using shadow puppets, of what is a single paragraph in the book, the backstory of one of the sailors on the Pequod. A successful blacksmith loses his happy family, home and occupation to drink. The puppets were freestanding on a table, and a handheld light cast their images against a large crumpled paper scrim. When one of the characters died, Mr. Thomas tipped the puppet forward, and its stand was revealed as a headstone. This single action was quite thrilling. He gave the narration, wearing a long black skirt and a long-sleeved black blouse. Then we watched a short film showing various aspects of the Moby Dick staging, and finally he came back out in more conventional clothes and talked with his interviewer. She was fairly starstruck and obviously a big fan. Overall, it was compelling and I hope will bring many people to see his performances.

The second event was less successful (in my opinion), being a talk on language and imagery of animals in Shakespeare. At least, I thought that was its premise, and the speaker began there, but got off into fairly high-level thinking about language and symbolism and . . . well, she lost me. I did learn that Shakespeare only used the word animal eight times in all of his plays, as at that time it was considered an adjective (like primal or abnormal), and he much more frequently said beast or creature. The flip side of this scarcity of the word animal, was the much more thorough integration of even an urban dweller's life with the animal world in the 1600s: pets, working creatures like horses or cattle, pigeon coops on every roof, sheep grazing in Hyde Park, etc. But this was also long before Darwin or even Linnaeus, and the world of beasts was much more magical and imaginative. Bees were born out of ox carcasses, bearcubs born as lumps and licked into shape by their mothers. 

Some of this I knew (and loved), so I enjoyed her few slides of Medieval bestiaries and tapestries, but her talk left Shakespeare, and I was struggling to hear, and the chairs were hard . . . I left after 40 minutes and took the early train home. I didn't feel I had wasted my time or money though, not for ten bucks and such a lovely day. Her mention of the Aberdeen Bestiary alone was worth the price of admission.

And of course, before I went to the lecture, I went to Water Tower and found this at a very good price:

This bag is also available at QVC  for even less than I paid for it! Not very much less, or I'd be annoyed, but enough to make it worth mentioning, and in more colors too. I'm extremely happy because it meets my requirements very nicely.

• Red
• Pebbled leather
• Single strap
• The "right" size
• Minimal hardware
• Outer pockets

A Rich Weekend, Part One

This weekend I was rich in learning, entertainment, time, food and friends.

Friday evening I went out to dinner with two good friends in the field, to Mercat a la Planxa on Michigan Avenue. It was amazing, even if the name makes me think of meerkats on a plank. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of one friend, we ordered the tasting menu. And not il poco tasting menu, either, but il grande. Here is what we ate, though I'm convinced I've forgotten something. Heidi can correct me. When I got home I scribbled down everything I could remember, but I'd had at least three glasses of very good wine. 

Bruschetta with fresh tomato, lemon and garlic

Dates in bacon

Manchego cheese and apples

Jamon Iberico sliced so thin you could see through it

Rabbit in pasta with sour cherry sauce and a foam (I forget what the foam was about)

Egg and potato frittata

Farro with baby pattypan squash and hazelnuts and watercress

Grilled octopus and potato rounds (little potato cutouts the size of Liberty dimes)

Tiny fried sweet Padron peppers

Morel risotto with slivered asparagus

Flatbread with short ribs, cheese and a bacon jam

Lambchops

Lobster

Beef tenderloin

The restaurant was beautiful, and cheerfully loud, the service lively, and every bite was delicious. Heidi and Pam weren't as thrilled with the octopus, so I got the whole plate to my greedy cephalopod-loving self. By the time the perfect beef arrived we were in a bit of a stupor from wine and deliciousness. It was expensive, but all I can say is it was an experience worth many times more than, say, a pair of pants.

Three cheeses, mustards and sliced apples.

Still to come, the Chicago Humanities Festival!

Snakes and Ammonites

This skirt refuses to show its true colors.

 It is GREEN. This is a closeup of my lap.

And this is my lovely fossil ammonite/turquoise necklace:

 And this is what was underneath the jacket:

The jacket is new to me, Liz Claiborne via eBay. I have a new affection for snake/lizard all of a sudden. I would love some shoes in this pattern. They seem like an interesting take on a nude shoe.

Now, everybody liked this outfit, and I liked the concept, but I was very conscious of my pudgy waist all day long. My waist and my neck are where I show my age, I think. Plus I HATE pinchy nylons.

If you haven't seen it already, there is a fantastic article making the rounds about what fashion judgement means to the poor, especially men and women of color. As someone who routinely judges people by what they are wearing in interviews (and elsewhere), it gave me pause. The comments in both locations make for thoughtful reading as well.

This is how I found the article, at John Scalzi's blog:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/10/30/why-i-wear-what-i-do/

and this is the original article.

http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-people/

Fun Things I Saw This Weekend

A good week, followed by a great weekend.

First I went to Evanston for a Chicago Humanities Festival talk, the first of four I'll be going to. They had a lot of appealing stuff this year.

Walking from the train to the campus, I saw a new piece of sculpture on a rooftop.

It was a gorgeous day to walk around campus, and I saw this piece of art on my stroll.

I don't know the actual title, but I refer to it as Han Unfreezing. I sent a snapshot to Ben for his amusement.

The CHF talk was entitled, "A Neuroscientist and a Medievalist Walk Into a Bar . . .", which entailed two Northwestern professors of the above disciplines talking about what their work had in common. The highlight was a Powerpoint of Shakespeare submitting Hamlet as a grant proposal and the resulting critique. Very funny and smart. The next program I'm going to see is the founder of Redmoon Theater talking about his goal of somehow staging Moby Dick, possibly with puppets.

In the middle of the week I went to the Illinois Library Association annual conference, held at Navy Pier this year. It was a grey, cool, slightly menacing day, perfect to spot ZOMBIES ON THE ROOFTOP:

Every time I walked by that window I twitched a little.  I was only at the conference for one day; my boss and I were part of a panel discussion in the afternoon. I caught a great morning program about reorganizing spaces and staffing from the directors of the Arlington Heights and the Palatine libraries. Not everyone will agree, I know, but I admire some of these large changes libraries are making. I think if you base them on data, get your staff involved, and make them in a few stages (not in one terrifying upheaval), they are laudable. Balance in all things.

That presentation and a board meeting and wrapping up a six page nomination for a library award made for a full week! On Saturday I met Heidi and Pam for this:

Oh, it was so ROMANTIC and DREAMY and FABULOUS. And Harry Groener was just marvelous in the title role. Then we went to Riva and had beautiful delicious food and talked about where we want to go on vacation. Since we couldn't come to any consensus on a European trip, we happily alighted on Canada! Technically another country! So we're discussing Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, which I am totally up for. Yay!

On Sunday I drove out to visit a friend and her new-ish baby (five months old) and got to chat with her, her husband, her older child (so adorable) and snuggle the baby for an hour or more.  Lovely, lovely Charlie. No pictures of them because they are not MY children. I do hope that Ben reproduces.

I ran around so much on the weekend that I feel like I need another one. 

Rounding Up

First of all, I discovered the amusing Tumblr Librarian Shame, courtesy of The Swiss Army Librarian, and this is what I posted:

 

It was the same day I wore my new-via-Ebay Vince Camuto blouse and my less new Halogen blue knit skirt. I even wore my blue glasses. All that blue was very soothing.

The next day I wore another favorite, my black Talbot's surplice top, with a pleated silk skirt and my black and white Everybody peep toes.

Heather's favorite outfit ever.

On a Rotary Thursday, I wore this Jones New York cardigan and a Talbot's eyelet skirt and my Aquatalia gold pumps. It was a little too eye-catching for a visiting Rotarian and I felt like swatting him away. Shoo fly.
 

And the last outfit I bothered to photograph included a Boden skirt, a pale grey top, my pink cotton cardigan and grey boots.

This outfit could definitely be improved. I'd like a classier pink cardigan (maybe) and definitely a purple pullover top that is heavy enough to wear on its own. I have a pretty purple silk blouse, but it doesn't look right with this skirt. It wasn't quite cool enough to wear my gray cashmere sweater.

It is decidedly fall now, and I've been busting out the boots (yay!) and eyeballing my jackets and trousers. I started writing down everything I wanted at the moment I wanted it, which is usually when I'm picking out an outfit. It makes for an interesting list so far, and hopefully I'll post it next week with some comments.

This weekend I am celebrating Heidi's birthday by seeing Cyrano starring the demon mayor of Sunnydale, Harry Groener. I'm very excited. Mr. Groener got rave reviews in the role, and is of course known for things other than turning into a giant snake and eating the high school principal.

BLACK and White? Or Black and WHITE?

Sam Edelman's Petty Ankle Boot in black and white, about $125 at various places.

Circus by Sam Edelman Holt boot, about $100 here and there.

So - white in front or white in back?