Chelsie’s Scarf Adventures with the Red Blazer

Scarf teaser.

I’m keeping it real with the clean laundry in the corner. I wore this gray sweater dress with my red blazer and I’m loving the result! It looks like I’m wearing a cozy infinity scarf (full disclosure: I’m actually wearing an infinity scarf now!). I paired it up with my leather earrings (self-made from recycled old belt).

And finally, a thrift expedition almost two weeks ago resulted in finding these three scarves. $1 a piece. First up, the Vera scarf from what I believe to be mid-70′s. I was loving this geometric green print. It reminds me of tree bark and finger prints in hexagon shapes.

Up next, the silk Liberty of London scarf. The red and blue in this really pop, and the busy pattern rocks. This scarf is super soft too.

And lastly, the GIANT Diane von Furstenberg scarf. Seriously, look at the size of this thing! I mean, I can probably make a wrap dress out of this. I think my favorites are the Liberty of London and the Vera scarf though.

Katie Daily Style – Wardrobe Workhorse and a Ferret

First off, many thanks to everyone who commented on my post about short hair. Thank you for the kind words about my health, your amazing and thoughtful insights into this topic, leaving your first comment (hi Katie K.!) and making me really want to read essays on the role of women’s hair in Icelandic sagas (hook a girl up, Emily?). I’m continuously in awe that such smart, savvy people want to participate, especially given how often I write about poop.

Now on to the clothes!

• Teal shirt – thrifted
• Chartreuse tank – Old Navy
• Green, chartreuse and orange scarf – thrifted
• Jeans – Parasuco
• Blue ballet flats – Old Navy

Because my day involved live animals, chemicals, and climbing out onto a roof, I knew I had to wear a more casual outfit than usual. One of the things I love about my job is that I’ve never been required to wear traditional office clothing. I have no love for button down shirts or dress pants, and suspect I would be quite miserable if I had to wear them on a regular basis. However, the reason my job doesn’t require that clothing is that museum work (contrary to the appearance that art gallery directors give off) can get messy. It’s not unusual for me, in the span of a week, to spend one day out on the prairie wearing my snake gaiters to protect me from “rattlers,” another day painting exhibit walls,  and a third day giving a presentation at a symposium. The outfit choices I make are dictated in some very interesting ways by what I’ll be doing each day.

“Practical” days like today can be a lot of fun, but can also be frustrating clothing-wise because there are only so many jeans and t shirt combinations I want to wear. That’s where scarves come in. To borrow a phrase from the ladies over at Scholar Style Guide, scarves are one of my “wardrobe workhorses.”

Most of the time, if it’s a day where I can’t wear a dress or a skirt, it’s also a day where I can’t wear jewelry, belts, or a lot of the other accessories I love to add. Necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings and pins are all potential hazards to museum collections, and can also be dangerous to wear when working with chemicals, live animals, and small children (usually more dangerous for me than them, as children are all grabby); all of which I do. Scarves, on the other hand, are lovely. No sharp edges and nothing breakable, and their bright colors and fun patterns liven up any outfit. They are flammable, but we try not to set too many fires in the museum.

I’ve worn a scarf around my head a la Rosie the Riveter while working on an archaeological excavation, wound one around my wrist to act as padding while holding a python (they get heavy after a while!), worn them around my neck when standing in a river collecting insects, and paired scarves with every skirt and dress I own on the days when I get to look fancy. No matter how I have to dress on a day, chances are a scarf will be involved.

Today’s outfit features one of my favorite color combinations: the split complementary of teal and chartreuse with pops of orangey-red. If I’d just worn the tank top and shirt together, the outfit would have been decent and respectable, but not particularly special. By adding the bright green scarf on top, I bookended the teal shirt with bits of chartreuse and threw in the pops of orange, creating a cohesive and more visually interesting outfit while still being  practical and comfortable. But, as cute as the outfit is, this guy totally out-cute-d me today.

Black-footed ferrets are definitely the cutest of all the world’s ferrets (actually, they don’t have that much competition, there are only three ferret species). Don’t let the face fool you, though. They may look all adorable and vital to prairie ecosystems, but they’re nasty little buggers. Just really cute ones. Getting to meet this guy made wearing a “practical” outfit today totally worth it.

Want to know about ferret poop?

How I Stopped The Scarves From Scarfing My Closet (Hopefully)

I love scarves. I’m sure you’ve noticed, they show up more often in my oufits than not. I love how they’re flowy, how they add pattern and dimension to my wardrobe, and how they continue to assist me on finessing a personal style that has a touch of Golden Girls-chic.

However, it turns out that I have a bit of a scarf problem. Not in the buying, as I’m the queen of finding them at thrift stores and garage sales and pride myself on never having paid more than $1 for one. Nor in the wearing, as they regularly appear in my wardrobe as necklaces, headbands, bracelets and belts. It’s the storing that has bested me to the point that I finally had to admit I had a problem and find a solution.

Here’s where my scarves were living, on an accordion set of hooks in my closet:

Can’t see the hooks, can you? I had so many scarves piled atop one another that they would routinely fall off the hooks – the muffled thud coming from my closet in the middle of the night convincing me that “The Clothes Beast,” the name The Rocket Scientist gives to my sometimes unwieldy pile of laundry, had finally come to life and was out to punish me for never using fabric softener. This simply would not do.

So, as I learned from The Art of War, or possibly The Hills, it’s important to know your enemy. Here are my scarves laid out on my bed:

Can’t really see the bed, either, eh?

I realized that one of the big problems was that when all my scarves were hanging on the same hooks, the small ones got lost behind the larger ones, and the silk, polyester and satin ones of all sizes just kept slipping off. Hanging was not the solution for those scarves. Then I realized that I had a drawer in my dresser that was empty. I’m still not sure how that happened, but since nothing had been stored in there for over 6 months, it seemed fair game to try as a new scarf home. All the slippery and small scarves got rolled up and put into the drawer. Now, with little fiddling, I can see all those scarves at once.

And the long scarves went back onto the hooks, which now you can actually see!

The cool thing about this system (besides the fact that it exists at all) is that along with it being easier to see all my scarves and decide which one(s) to wear, I can also evaluation my collection as a whole. For example, all my long scarves are in cool colors: blue, green and purple. If I find another cute blue, green or purple scarf, chances are I already have one that fills the same niche. But if I find a red, yellow, or orange scarf…

Now, I’m famous for letting my organization techniques lapse, but I’m going to try to keep this one up – promise!

P.S. Doesn’t the one rolled red and blue scarf at the bottom of the photo look like the pattern is an angry face?

Katie Daily Style – And So We Meet Again…

• Purple “deer” shirt – thrifted
• Tan vest – Old Navy
• Trouser jeans – Dish
• Multi-colored scarf – thrifted
• Geode necklace – museum
• Tan peep toes – thrifted

Earlier this week I took a research trip to the big city, on the hunt for a possibly awesome fossil for a possibly awesome exhibit. Because I was meeting with fancy-schmancy smarty pants, I dressed nicely: purple blouse, tan blazer, denim pencil skirt, and tan heels. I liked the color combination so much I recreated a casual version for an afternoon of thrift shopping. This scarf, with its purples, blues and tans, was made for this outfit, but I didn’t wear it for style, I wore it for sweet, sweet thrifting revenge. Revenge on Blanche, my thrifting arch nemesis.

Tour de Scarf

I love scarves. Scarves are a great exercise in textiles, because there’s no structure and no seamstressing to them — it’s just a piece of fabric and some creative wrapping or knotting or pinning. They’re dirt simple to make from scraps, they’re typically inexpensive in thrift stores, and there’s no fussing about whether or not they fit. I love them!

As alluded to in a past post, my wardrobe is in disarray, so I’m trying to tidy it up. I rustled up about ten scarves, but I could’ve sworn I have more, and I can think of a couple I’m pretty sure I still have that are missing in action. I can’t think of where they are, though, so hopefully I’ll rediscover them in my clean-up. But in the mean time, here’s a perusal of my currently accounted for scarves. Here they all are!

They look so nice all hung up together!

A few summers ago, I sublet a room which had a wooden dowel suspended from the ceiling which was normally used as a partial room divider (the usual occupant hung curtains on it). I took over the whole room and hung my scarves from it instead, and it looked wonderful. I’ve always wanted to recreate that, but suspending things form ceilings is very ceiling dependent, and it hasn’t worked so well since then. Enter hangers on the back of my closet door!

The three square scarves.

These are my square scarves, and these I tend not to wear as much. I like to wrap things around my neck and have ends trailing, so long rectangles tend to work better for me. Both brown and white flower pattern and the red silk paisley scarves were thrifted, the blue gauze with metallic stripes was from the lovely Sarah from Spain (I think — she’s been so many places I’m not 100% sure!).

Colours!

These are all long bright rectangles, and I love how bright and cheery they are. The green and white striped scarf is really long and quite wide, and I used to wear it as a head scarf for kicking around the house. I never got the knack of tying it properly, and then chopped all my hair off and it’s got nothing to grab on to anymore. The peach scarf has a neat nubby texture to it, and I have no idea where I got it. The purple and pink scarf is a belt from a dress of my mom’s from the 60′s that I found in my grandparents’ house some years ago. I wanted to keep the dress too, but they all said the dress was too short and I couldn’t have it. I protested that my mom had worn this back in the day, so it should be fine, but I’m a few inches taller than my mom, and apparently the dress was Scandalously Inappropriate. It was itchy purple wool with a sort of standup neckline and cap sleeves, and it was probably not the slightly bit comfortable to wear to do anything, but I was heartily disappointed about the whole thing. The belt was deemed okay, though.

Everyday scarves from various times.

These three scarves are the scarves I have worn (or currently wear) on a daily basis. I tend to take one scarf and wear it non-stop for a fall-winter, and these are them. The orange, blue and green square pattern is the one that started it all — it was, I think, my first scarf. I made it (ineptly) back when I started sewing, and it’s neat material but because I made it a tube, rather than finishing the edges of a rectangle, it folds in half all the time and gets irritating to wear. I haven’t worn it in ages, but I should give it a shot again, because it’s neat. The black and white scarf, shown looped over twice, is (was?) my signature scarf for years. I made it too, and through most of undergrad and my MSc I wore that scarf from about October to March. Indoor, outdoor, under various weights of coats, that scarf was always there. It was distinctive, versatile, and kept me warn in my chilly university building, and it’s my go-to scarf. The stylized sun scarf is my newest scarf, and I’ve been wearing it recently. It’s silk, versus the polyester (I think) of the black and white standby, and so does a much better job of keeping the wind off my neck. Considering that I wait for the bus in somewhat of a wind tunnel, this is important. Plus, wearing the black and white scarf all the time means I wore few other scarves, and I’m trying to branch out and use my wardrobe better.

And finally, there’s that giant purple scarf on the edge of the first picture. It’s huge and made of acrylic, so I use it when I want to wear a sundress around the house but it’s not quite warm enough:

Giving the arched eyebrow to the less than tropical temperature around here

Can’t find me under here, winter chill!