Has nobody asked you how you are? You look like you might not last the day.

 Tunic: Joe Browns. Leggings: New Look. Boots: Dr Martens. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

Fighting off a cold today, so an easy, comfy, don’t-have-to-think-about-it sort of outfit for the day. And a belated and brief blogpost. Sorry!

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground

 Tunic: Joe Browns. Leggings: Primark. Boots: Dr Martens. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

Journey home double the normal time. Bumper to bumper most of the time. No idea why.

I tired and out of coherent thoughts now.

Back later.

x

You talk about vengeance. Is vengeance going to bring your son back to you? Or my boy to me?

Dress: Joe Browns. Leggings: Primark. Boots: Jenna by Dr Martens. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

In the space of one night we seem to be back on schedule for Autumn, which means I can wear this rather funky dress/tunic. I tend to figure that with something this length that distinction depends entirely upon your height and level of comfort with leg-baring.

I’m average height and am completely fine with showing off my legs – but I really don’t like tights and I prioritise comfort. Something like this is a tunic, therefore, because I can’t easily wear it with holdups and it would require that sort of constant primness of sitting and bending that’s a bind for a casual day when you’re one of life’s fidgets!

And since I’m spending the day with one of my oldest friends inspecting the Autumn/Winter offerings at our local yarn shop, there will be plenty of bending and stretching to reach the pretty things. It’s this time of year that knitting really comes into its own and I suddenly start trying to find the perfect pattern for a knitted dress. I never quite can, of course – I seem to come over all Goldilocks when confronted with the plethora of available not-quite-right patterns. Perhaps I should make this the year that I take the plunge, sketch something out, start doing the maths (Lots of maths in knitting. How else would you make sure things will fit?), and rustle up a pattern myself.

I’ll be in your arms, like a Moonlight fantasy

 Dress: Joe Browns. Belt: thrifted. Shoes: Clarks via eBay. Necklace: made by me

I currently have what seems to be called in business ‘a nice problem to have’. In other words, I’m now smaller than most of last year’s Autumn/Winter wardrobe. The only things that still fit are the stretchy things, the wrap dresses, and the things that were on the snug side when I bought them. So, lots of shopping ahead of me.

But before I did that, I wanted to go back to colour analysis. I ‘had my colours done’ a few years ago, but to be honest although it gave me a bit of a steer and a few ideas I’d not had before, I never really felt quite satisfied with the results. I was, for the record, pegged as ‘Soft and Warm’ within the Colour Me Beautiful system – it’s all about muted colours and low contrast, which is true to some degree but my sister and I both had a feeling that I could take stronger colours than the Soft and Warm palette would suggest.

So, a couple of weeks ago I went to this lady for a much more personalised experience. Jane really took her time to explain her thinking, and spent a good hour draping me with oodles of swatches of fabric in every colour you could think of, determining what looked great, ok, and awful on me. Once she’d gone through everything, she gave some thoughts on how to combine my ‘best’ colours and on make-up, and then sent my custom swatch book through the post a couple of days later. I’d definitely recommend her to folk local to Nottingham who are interested in having a bespoke colour analysis done – she really knows her stuff and was a pleasure to spend an afternoon with.

It’s amazing the difference it makes to see the colours a) on you in natural daylight and without any other distractions and b) in comparison with one another – it really helps illustrate what works and what doesn’t, and given how far my resulting custom palette differed from the standard selections it makes it pretty clear that trying to figure out which box you fit into is never going to work completely. I’d say there were a few surprises as well as a few things I’d expected and a few things which explained why I’m drawn to or avoid particular colours.

Muted is definitely the way forward for me. True brights – think zingy and almost neon – and true pastels are a really fast way to make me look like a zombie. I visibly winced when any of those shades were draped on me, put it that way! My dislike of pink was vindicated by every single shade bar a lone fuschia that made it into my wallet looking decidedly awful on me.

But I’m not entirely warm-toned – there were a few cooler shades which looked good on me that have made it into my wallet. And I can wear both gold and silver jewellery – it’s the brightness that’s key, so antique shades work where bright gold and bright silver don’t look so great. Mustard and salmon surprised me as looking great. Black actually looks ok on me – it just didn’t make it into the wallet because very dark brown is a better neutral base. There were quite a lot of medium light shades that looked ok-but-not-amazing on me so none of those made the cut. Whites – well, I wasn’t wrong that pure white looks terrible on me!

So what are my best colours? Well…

Pretty palette, isn’t it? There are fewer blues than I would have liked, but they’re the shades I do tend to wear anyway. And look at all those reds, greens and browns! Pleasingly, there are a few purples, too, though not all of them have photographed well – same goes for the teals at top right.

All in all, I’m really pleased with my palette – and with how many of my existing clothes fit within it. It’s given me some great ideas for colours I wouldn’t have thought of without seeing them on me (orange! mustard! fuschia!), and, well, I do have a whole new wardrobe to buy…

Start a car. Get away. There’s so much you could see today.

 Dress: Joe Browns. Shoes: Clarks via eBay. Belt: M&S via eBay. Necklace: Next

Good gravy, this is one of those days where I’m grateful for both the fact that I only work a four day week and the fact that I am a fundamentally positive person!

It’s funny. I’ve been thought before to be a pessimist, and I can understand why but given that I know what’s in my heart and mind I don’t believe it to be true. I hope. I expect the good stuff. I just make sure I’m prepared to face any possible bad stuff, because I know from experience that if I have an idea of what could happen then I’ll deal better with it if it ever does and the whole thing will go more smoothly even if what I’m hoping for happens not to manifest itself.

The thing is, if there’s something I’m hoping for then… well, I’m terribly British and don’t really wear my heart on my sleeve about it. I’m more likely to make a joke of it, which often means joking about the negative possible outcomes because that’s easier to do than openly state a hope that’s close to my heart.

But that’s not what I believe will  happen. Secretly, I believe the good stuff will happen pretty much all the time. I have a pretty positive attitude to life – everything tends to work out in the end, especially if you get off your arse and help it in the right direction, and I’d rather try to squeeze a joke out of a situation and try to make a few people – self, obviously, included – laugh than mope and wallow.

I grant you, I’ve done the wallowing thing in my time, but… I’m not a teenager or someone in my mid-twenties who’s only just getting over some tough times any more. I’m older, more experienced, less brittle, more relaxed. I know that the things that seem foggy and unbearably confusing and frustrating become clear eventually. I know what matters. What matters is contentment. And you’re the person most instrumental in bringing about your own contentment.

Time goes by so slowly…

 Dress: Joe Browns. Shoes: Clarks via eBay. Necklace: made by me

A day of good news and birthdays at work. Can’t argue with that, but I’m afraid my brain is fried from all the attendant planning. Back tomorrow, eh?

I never got on with Brownies, but…

 Dress: Joe Browns. Belt: M&S via eBay. Shoes: New Look

It’s a good job I’m the sort of person that carries a sewing kit with me (It lives in the knitting bag. Yes, I know.). And that there was no-one around when this otherwise lovely wrap dress got caught in the breeze first thing in the morning.

One quick duck into the ladies once I got to work, a few hasty stitches later, and I felt slightly more confident that I wouldn’t spend the day flashing my slip to my colleagues.

Although I suppose that might have cheered a few of ‘em up a bit

Sheer delight

Dress: Joe Browns. Leggings: Warehouse. Boots: Dune. Necklace: made by me

I’m in celebratory mode this evening. It’s my other half’s birthday tomorrow (which means he’ll be the same age as me again – I’m a smidge over a month older than he is), so we’ve taken a week and a half off work to generally chill out.

Plans for the day involve takeaway and a Lord of the Rings marathon, and we have begun the celebrations with, er, a cup of tea and a creme egg. Well, why not?