Winter Dresses


It's that time of year again when I begin to wish that southeast Texas had seasons. Discernable seasons, at least. The joke is that we have Almost Summer, Summer, Little More Summer, and Christmas; Christmas looks just like the other three but has weird decorations (things like cowboy Santas riding in sleighs pulled by longhorn cattle).

What passes for "winter" here is usually my heavily air-conditioned office. It's always November at work! (Energy conservationists take note: The cold office is a necessity. I work in archives. We're basically a big refrigerator.)

It's not even supposed to be that cold this year. Last winter was cold (by regional standards) but this summer was miserably hot, and I hear that this winter is supposed to be very mild. Darn. Well, I'm going to Illinois for five days in mid-December; that ought to give me a good cold fix.

Anyway, this is the time of year I daydream of winter dresses. I got the one above--Folkwear 208, which is out of production; number 208 is now used for the child's Kinsale Cloak--on eBay after having looked for it for quite a while. It seems not to have been very popular when it was in production. I've only ever seen one example actually sewn up, which is a bit of a pity because' it's darned cute--cuter than in the picture, I think--and even looks sort of comfortable. The actual pattern I won is a later one; the cover is blue and the woman on the right is wearing a modernized version of the dress that has a shorter, just-below-the-knee skirt. I'll probably make the modern version for work, and possibly leave off the bodice ruffles. It's too late in style to use for most of my pioneer-ish music gigs, anyway.

I don't think my hair will do that Gibson Girl thing, though. Ha, ha.


This is the other dress pattern I keep thinking would be a good winter dress. I need to size it up, but not a lot. I'm not sure what kind of closure it has, either; possibly back buttons? I'll have to check; I don't remember. But it just looks as though it's begging to be made of flannel and then curled up in on chilly days.

Sooner or later, my perpetual-winter office is also going to push my minimal knitting skills over the line into sweater territory, too, out of sheer necessity. I can't find a good wool-blend sweater anywhere these days.

Comments

Val said…
I live in Michigan, so I get to enjoy the fun of winter clothes. Having real seasons is fun, because you get to have three totally different wardrobes - summer, winter, and inbetween, which consists of April, May, September, and October. I once visited Texas in May and was horrified to find out it was 90 degrees. "Oh," I was told, "You should come back in the spring." Ummmm....May is spring here. Apparently not in Texas, though!
Heh. I lived in Pennsylvania and Colorado as a child, and went to college in Iowa, so the concept of seasons is not totally foreign.

And the weather got the last laugh on me--we had a week of highs in the 30's, which is almost unheard-of here. And after a summer with heat indices in the 110's for weeks at a time! And the trip to Illinois was no colder than Texas! I can't win.