Well, campus is back on-line. Or at least my building is.

I celebrated by buying some yarn from Elann. Some butter-yellow bulky weight I had been eyeing for an Einstein jacket, and some olive-colored polar weight (yeah, I know, I live in Oklahoma, where I can wear polar-weight maybe 3 weeks out of the year, but is was so very pretty) for a cardigan (and heck, if my office turns into a meat-locker again, I might wear a polar-weight sweater in there any way).

this kind of blows my yarn budget for the fall, but that's ok. Actually, I got the yarn (plus a Classic Elite pattern for a jacket that I plan to do with the polar weight) for considerably less than one good sweater would cost at the store. And then I'd have to go shopping for it, too. And this is probably the year when puce is the new black or something like that, and I'd never find a color I liked.

It's funny - when I quilt, I generally go for pastel colors, but when I look for sweater yarn for myself, it's never pastel (except for my very first sweater which is sort of a rose-quartz color). I tend to go with highly-saturated colors or jewel tones. I'm also fond of natural colors (I have some Stahl Lemur in-stash, also an Elann grab, that is called "forest floor" - it's greens and browns and a bit of grey). I like green, I wear a lot of green (but never on Thursdays in case some of my students have heard "the legend" and start snickering). I like green and yellow, they tend to be my favorite colors. My house is all done in different greens and yellows. (Actually, I tend to prefer greyish greens like sage to the very bright greens or to blue-greens)

maybe I was a Hobbit in a past life - wasn't Bilbo Baggins' hobbit-hole painted different shades of green and yellow?

I also wear a lot of brown and sometimes grey. I think brown, gray-green, and grey tend to be underappreciated colors - there's a lot of variability there, they can be very soothing to look at. I don't tend to think of them as drab. Sure, there are unattractive shades, but there are ugly shades of all colors, or shades that don't look good on the average human complexion.

It's also possible my fondness for green is a recent development from living in a climate where there's so little green during most summers (everything dries down to sort of a straw color), and I miss that richness. Perhaps if I lived in the Amazon, I'd hate green, and want to do everything in pastels.

but maybe not to wear. I'm always cautious of looking too "girly" and unserious or, the opposite extreme, looking like mutton made up as lamb. Because when you're in your mid-30s, it's hard to know what you can get away with, clothing-wise, any more. So I go for "arty" and "sophisticated" and hope it comes off ok.