Hello October 🎃 Sweaters, Halloween, Fall and more!

It’s October and so the Halloween anticipation begins!

I’ve already gotten one “I saw this Halloween decor and thought of you, would you like me to pick it up for you?” text and I am delighted. (It’s a candle shaped like a black cat, and a tea candle holder shaped like a spider, if you were curious.)

If Halloween isn’t your vibe, I hope you’re at least enjoying the anticipation of sweater weather. It’s still a little too warm for sweaters here, but I’m not complaining. As a wise friend says “you win some, and you win some more later.”

I have a few updates!

New posts for you:

• ​Is writing about writing still writing?​
• ​Closet like a hotel? Then you’ll never have cohesive style​
• ​First glimpses of fall​

I’ve also been more active on SubStack notes. It’s been fun writing in more micro-form. If you’re on the platform, find me here.

Speaking of sweaters:

I texted this to a friend for a friend of theirs. They had knit a truly stunning allover cabled sweater. Beautifully done, carefully finished, gorgeous to look at, and still not quite right. Wrong yarn, too warm, tight finishing, unworn.

If you have a project (or anything really) that is sitting in that beautiful but not quite right space, I hope this helps:

What an amazing sweater – so obviously knit with so much love and care and skill and gaining skills!

I have come to learn that sometimes the experience of the project is meant to stay within the creating process of the piece. And the finished item is a different item.

There are of course repurposing opportunities but sometimes the completion of the piece completes our journey with it ❤️

And so it becomes two questions: 1) is how to come to a place of acceptance with that? And 2) what to do with the object?

Neither has a wrong answer. Sometimes I think about it like a breakup with someone you love who isn’t quite right and may stay in your life in a different form (maybe in a memory box, maybe as a friend, etc) or may not.

(I speak from much personal experience here – it is heartbreaking to put this much work into something and have it still not work out. That still doesn’t mean the experience was wasted.)

Gaining skills and honing your craft always comes with a string of projects that don’t work. Some are horrific failures, some are amusing failures, and some are so close but still not right. It’s all part of the process.

Highlights from the archives:

In honor of October a Halloween + fall refresh + caring for your sweater selection:

• ​Style Portals and why I cover Halloween among finding your authentic day to day style​
• ​How to remove balls of fuzz from sweaters & stop looking like a disheveled Muppet​
• ​The siren’s song of the “fall wardrobe refresh”​

Current and recent projects:

• ​WhoWearsWho.com – I’ve been writing, coaching, consulting, thinking, etc on the ways we express ourselves through personal style and what we wear in our day to day lives.
• ​Talking About Clothes – a podcast that ended up being my Covid project, where I talked about clothes with the people who wear them. We had beautifully thoughtful conversations about the role clothing plays in our lives.
• ​Working with creative business owners (designers, artists, writers, coaches, consultants, teachers, makers, crafters, creators, speakers, etc) to build and run their businesses.
• ​Poetry & Practicalities – a growing collection of short essays on living a creative life – the balance between life’s poetry and practicalities.

Excited to share these new things with you. I’ll be back soon with another update.