On The Lam

From the heat! Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we've had an unusually cool summer, but yesterday we started a mini-heat wave (mini in days, not fahrenheits - 99 yesterday, predicted 102 today) and had a grass fire to boot. So today i'm hiding out/sheltering in place to avoid the heat but also the terrifically crappy air quality. I've had bouts of severe asthma-type breathing troubles since i was fifteen. Mostly things go downhill for no obvious reason. But sometimes a bad spell has followed a really bad fire season, so i take extra care to avoid the smoke. This morning the sky looked fairly clear but the air just smelled like filthy ashes. Luckily, i have a great project to keep me happily occupied indoors - i got some 100% cotton ripstop fabric on Sunday for making a replacement pair of cargo pants. I ripped apart my last pair (with the 6" long tear in the upper thigh) and am using the pieces as a base for a new pattern. Yay!

I got these shoes at the REI used gear sale. They are Merrell Siren's with Gore Tex, a $100 shoe in perfect condition which we got for $19.83. It's been years since i have had any type of hiking or walking shoe since it's hard to fit my feet. What a find! The REI used gear sale is a scene. You have to get to the store at 5 or 6 am and wait in line until 8am, when they start to hand out tickets for the sale, which starts at 10am. They let in 20 people every fifteen minutes, and you get to stay in the sale room for fifteen minutes. Fortunately you can take anything you can carry out of the sale room and decide whether or not to buy it at your leisure. None of the shoes had sizes marked anywhere easily visible, so i just grabbed whatever Merrell's i could find (i've had good luck with that brand in the past) and tried them on outside. If you spend a lot of time outdoors and/or have no money, it's very worthwhile. The deals are amazing, but you never know what will be there.

This get-up is easy for walking and doing stuff around the house. I've worn it twice in the past couple of weeks. This outfit shows the way a pattern can tie two colors together. The dress would look fine combined simply with the hat and shoes since the latter are a neutral khaki color. But adding the underskirt with the khaki stripe takes things more to the level of an 'outfit', as opposed to whatever clothes you happen to be wearing at the same time. When you're working with a color and a neutral, it's not such a big deal. But if you were pairing forest green and burgundy, say, or coral and lime green, adding a pattern containing both colors to your look will make your outfit seem much more thought-out and on purpose. The pattern helps the viewer's eye to 'make the connection' between the two colors.

Adios compadres! I better sign off before 'they' figure out where i am.....

Hat: Tula
Dress: own design, inspired by Work With What You Got
Skirt: own design
Shoes: Merrell Siren
Belt: vintage