Spring Things: Part II

In the last installment of Spring Things, I let fly with my grievances about hosiery. The next day, I bought a pair of tan, patterned stockings at Target, digging their Machu Picchu zigzag stairstep design and hoping their tone would turn out OK.
Alas, zigzags in the package looked like stretch marks in practice.

I found these cute retro
earrings at Carousel
last weekend.

I dug out my hot pink tights on Wednesday, which worked well with a black and white checked pencil skirt, a gray turtleneck sweater, and these yellow earrings I found last weekend at Carousel.

Today, I braved the rain in bare legs. It was a little chilly for such foolishness, but my core was warm in a lined pink wool skirt, short-sleeved sweater, and gray wool cardigan.

I’ve really fallen for cardigans. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but it must have around the time I was buying my suit for a campus visit. Ah, professionals need not wear jackets every day, sales associates informed me. Sometimes, they wear cardigans.

I can't resist stripes! Here's a recent
cardigan sweetheart, from Fringe & Fray.

Once a very gifted student wrote an essay for my class about his experience in Catholic school. It was from this man that I first heard the term “shadow swearing.” Students at his school were required to wear a cardigan to chapel, and if you forgot yours, the nuns would direct you to the coat closet where you’d be forced to choose an abandoned, scratchy sweater, quite likely with a used tissue wadded in the pocket. These many semesters later, I still shudder at the memory of his description of that Catholic school coat closet's aura of repulsion and shame.

I recently reread Ander Monson’s essay “Cranbrook Schools: Adventures in Bourgeois Topologies.” Before Monson arrives at this private school as a scholarship student, he obtains cardigans from JCPenney at the Copper Country Mall near his home. “I wanted, ridiculously, unsurprisingly, to fit in, and thought that meant cardigans,” Monson writes (32). “I think they were made of rayon or something," he muses. "No one at this school wore cardigans and certainly not the kind you find at JCPenney” (33). Unlike Monson, I was a public school kiddo, but like Monson I, too, have miscalculated the appropriate attire in the hopes of fitting in or coming off kind of classy. And, like Monson's, my hometown is the kind of place where "Penney's" is considered a good store.

Maybe I dodged cardigans for so long for much the same reason that, until recently, I’d make quiet gagging noises if I thought about dress pants (or, even worse, slacks): I hadn’t yet met the right one. 

Now that I've given up puffy coat for the season, I
have lapels! This tiny flower brooch is also from
the accessories menagerie at Fringe & Fray.