I’m sure we all have our favorite seasons – wrapping a scarf on your neck during snowy white winters or the feeling of an ice cold beer on a sweltering summers. But, mine has always been late autumn. That crisp in the air that brings out the light layers and inspires cuddling under down comforters at night. Hats and gloves are not out of place, but you still feel at home on an afternoon stroll, without Jack Frost beckoning you inside.
As I sit here clacking away on my keyboard, I’m enjoying a tradition that hasn’t been able to happen for several years. Thanks to the wonders of science and the fact that they released the vaccine for 5-12 year olds, my sister, brother-in-law, and niece made the trek all the way down to NC (and I do mean trek. None of us felt safe flying yet, so they bundled into the car and zoomed through 13 hours of pavement and rest stops).
I’ve always had a thing for clothing that finds its way to nature. Floral border prints, necklaces of leaves snaking around my neck, and you are all by now pretty aware of my fruit-themed sartorial obsession. I wonder if it’s a way to help me feel more grounded. Where, despite the pavement I click my heels down or the car I zip to the lab in, I am always a little bit connected to nature.
When I was a kid, we had this massive purple lilac bush in the backyard. I can vaguely remember stepping off the back porch in late Spring and being hit with that immediate, sweet scent, a wall of purple calling me forward. There are a lot of memories of my childhood that linger. But few are as powerful as olfactory memories – one whiff of lilac and I can literally feel the start of summer.
I will very likely be dating myself here, but something I have always been grateful for is being one of the last generations to grow up analog. Truly, the internet wasn’t really a thing in my teen years. Home computers had only just started to become normal, cordless phones were the newfangled modern technology (call waiting? What?!!), and to get the movie times you had to dial a number and drum your fingers on the countertop while a recorded voice droned on through your options.
I know we all have those photos saved to our Pinterest boards – the elusive collector’s items, the seemingly unattainable vintage. More often than not, I’ll have a photo saved of a vintage piece, and then will inevitably see it appear a few weeks later on some of my fellow vintage huntresses. And all I can do is hope that one day it will be released back into the wild…
Probably the most common question I’ve gotten since I started this blog (other than, “Are those your real clothes?”), is “How do you get your skirts so gloriously full?? I have my standard response, which is that I have always been a two-crinoline minimum kind of gal. But, much like every vintage huntress out there, I’m always in search of the next magical solution to the full-skirted glory I crave….
I feel like it was only about two days ago I was bemoaning the start of the new semester. Like most of my colleagues (and profs in solidarity worldwide), I felt burnt out before it even began. And suddenly I blinked and found myself on the threshold to October. I guess if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that time chuggs steadily and relentlessly forward to the next station, whether we like it or not.
Awhile back in February (feels like a hundred years ago in COVID-years), the lovely Amy of Miss Hero Holliday and I embarked on a joint sewing adventure. We decided to each create our own take on Simplicity 4784 for Valentine’s Day, zipping photos and ideas across the pond as we went. I have to admit, even though I am usually a solo-sewist, it was one of the most fun sewing projects I had tackled in ages.
I’m teaching neurobiology this semester and we started to dip our toes into the wonderful world of neurotransmitters last week: those magic little chemicals in our brain that allow for our neurons to transfer information to one another. One such neurotransmitter is dopamine – it’s historically known as the “pleasure neurotransmitter.” When we experience something unexpectedly awesome, our brains get a burst of this feel good substance.