july is purple

These purple shoes (and the accompanying tomato-colored beads) were my favorite score from the clothes swap last night. I love the clothes swap. It has really been helping me through this whole no-clothes-buying pledge for 2008. This was the second swap of the year (see my post/pictures about the first one on Sew Green), and one of my personal bests in a long time, in terms of quality of free stuff snagged.

I was also happy that a friend who I invited to her first-ever clothes swap last night had a great time and took both of the sweet vintage dresses that I brought. Both were a bit too tight on me, but she rocked them like a hurricane.

I don't give purple enough credit. Blue-ish purples look terrible on me, and remind me of earth mamas in muumuus, so I tend to dismiss all purple as bad for me and unwearable. But the truth is, reddish-purple is a fabulous color that I really should wear more often. One might call it "plum."



This is the short-sleeve knitted top I'm working on for myself right now. I am amazed at how well it will go with the new shoes when it's done. The two markers show how I'm coping with managing a fancy stitch pattern across the seams in a top-down garment. The yellow marker shows where the increases go for the shoulder seam. The pink marker shows where the next repeat begins for the stitch pattern. It's a 4-stitch repeat, so every time I get 4 non-seam stitches worked up there, I move the marker up 4 and start the stitch pattern there. It's working quite well. But I'm going slooowly. Somehow it seems like my knitting gets slower all the time. Why is that?

I am dying to know what the next purple thing will be that comes into my life. I've got my heart set on a Labradoodle, but I don't think they come in purple. Perhaps some sort of sea creature...?