Monsters!

There are monsters on my socks!

I finished these on Saturday and am pretty happy with them. It's too hot to wear them now, but fall will come back eventually. I'm off socks for a few weeks now until the Summer of Socks starts. The Storm Water scarf is making good progress (it looks like it's going to be pretty long), and is serving as my mindless knitting project of the moment. The scarf has also gotten me excited about lace knitting again, and I've even put in several rows on my Icarus shawl, which I hope to finish this summer. (We'll see).

In WT news, I went through my jewelry, which is the only big group of accessories I have at the moment (there are scarves and winter accessories, but I'll leave them for another season). In the interest of not having to link all the photos, I've created a set in my flickr photostream, with my comments. You can see it here. Since I tend to wear the same few pieces every day, I've been making a conscious effort to wear different pieces this week. It's a little difficult right now, since my summer job is very casual and much of my jewelry is kind of dressy. When my internship starts in about a week I'll be wearing my office clothes again, and I'm hoping I'll be able to work more pieces in.

I am also reminded that I like silver jewelry better than gold, but that I own much more gold-toned stuff than silver. This is in part because much of my jewelry has been "borrowed" from my mother or has been handed down from my grandma, and they both prefer/preferred gold. My mom has tons of jewelry, mostly of the costume variety, but also the "good stuff." Since she doesn't wear lots of her older pieces anymore, but since I like the vintage look, I've ended up with lots of her things. I like to refer to it as "stolen" since it usually ended up in my jewelry box permanently after I had asked my mom if I could wear a piece "just this one time." She doesn't really mind, though, since as I said they're mostly things she doesn't wear anymore. Looking at lots of the things that were hers, I realize that my mom was pretty stylish back in the day. She got married at 35, which was much later than most of her relatives and friends, and so, as she puts it, she had longer to spend her money on shoes and clothes. I love to look at pictures of her from the 60s and early 70s -- I'm still waiting for pictures of her in her wig collection to surface. :)

The jewelry that I've gotten from my grandma is kind of a roundabout story. My maternal grandmother loved costume jewelry and had a ton of it. For reasons that I won't get into here, she stopped wearing a bunch of it and it was just sitting in her apartment. Her move into an assisted living facility (a few years before she passed away) coincided with my own big move to the East Coast for grad school. Since she needed to pare down her belongings and I needed household goods, I was gifted with all sorts of things, from her rocking chair to her dishes to cookbooks, to some of the jewelry she didn't have a use for. I got a few more pieces after her death. My mom and grandma's jewelry isn't just pretty, and I don't just like it because of my own scholarly interest in jewelry -- it's a reminder of who they are (or were) and who they used to be. There are parts of their lives in those pins and necklaces, and owning them is, for me, a way of keeping all that close to me. And it doesn't hurt that much of it is pretty darn gorgeous!

All the jewelry is currently stored in a series of jewelry boxes, new and vintage. I need to come up with something better, though, since it's getting a little crowded in there. I should whip up some little bags for things the next time I get out the sewing machine, since enamelled and rhinestone jewelry is very vulnerable to scratches and losing stones if it gets all jumbled together. There's one more thing for the summer project list....

Going through my clothes, jewelry, and makeup, I've noticed that there are lots of things I used to do or wear that I don't really take the time for any longer. I've got some thoughts about why this is, and also about why Wardrobe Therapy has been far more difficult for me than I anticipated, but that has to wait for the weekend. It's been a long day and I'm looking forward to some knitting and relaxing before bed.