From January to March

Hello friends,

This is a catching up post before we get to Spring at full swing here In The Writer's Closet. I gathered a few outfit photos which were taken any time from January through February and most recently March outfits...and of course, some of the life events which went with them.

JANUARY 

This silver pendant was my Christmas gift and something really special because it is based on my daughter's little masterpiece. She started drawing at two y.o., and I still keep many of her pictures, but those are only understandable to me since I was the one who noticed all the nuances of Anya's development each day. I remember precisely that I looked at a drawing by a child a little older than Anya thinking that she wasn't capable just yet to do something like this, and literally the very next day (Anya had barely turned three) she drew this little masterpiece. Friend of Justin's, Underhill Jewelers, did a wonderful job copying Anya's image to the silver pendant, so I can wear it close to my heart and cherish it forever. 

Her clown was based on a character from the popular educational early childhood program Baby Einstein, and it struck me just how many details Anya was able to observe at her young age, and how recognizable the character was, and also very heartfelt at the same time. She was drawing, painting, sculpting with clay, making her own books for many years, all of her childhood. We had a friend who saved her drawings thinking that some day she'd become a famous artist. Who knows. But to me, this little picture of a clown brings me back to her early years, giving me a sense of a deep connection with her and our life together.

Source - Baby Einstein 

FEBRUARY

February brought us a surprising for our location amount of snow. Right here by the Sound, we got 13 inches (33 cm), and up in the mountains 5 feet (1.5 m). I read that 70 miles of I-90 (one of our interstate highways) was closed due to accumulations of snow. Of course, to those of you who live in a colder, rougher climate, it is not as a big deal. But here in the Pacific Northwest it really is. In the US, it is always about safety, and since such huge snowfall happens once every few years (we often have winters when there is no snow at all or just a little white dust which melts faster than it falls), you can imagine that neither our roads, nor cars and drivers are prepared to deal with such extreme situations. Therefore, school districts close, and many people work from home whenever they can.

I was also directly affected by snow this year. Back in Fall, I was invited to have my very first Meet the Author school visit, and we had to reschedule it a couple of times because roads weren't safe to travel (the school is located in Issaquah, a small town towards the Cascade Mountains). It was worth the wait though - kids were so curious, open and full of questions that I spent all 40 minutes answering them! 

   

But even after all the big snow melted, we had a couple of tiny snowfalls and quite a long cold spell even in March. It gave me an excuse to play with new additions to my coat collection, this oversized tapestry coat in particular. I found that it doesn't need a lot of fancy partners, and often wore it with minimalistic sweater dresses (as in the opening photo), but I also created some crazy combinations with more patterns, colors and textures, such as this outfit that I wore to a writing class in our local library at the end of February.

MARCH

As soon as the weather started improving (in the second third of March), we got outside to play in the sunshine, and made a ferry trip to Vashon and Maury, the islands which we enjoy looking at from our windows every day for the past 12 years. At that point, I was so sick of winter coats (even cute and stylish ones) that I was happy to wear light layers instead, such as a long denim coat/dress and a Russian platok from my collection. I had the platok as an option in case we visited the Russian Orthodox Monastery on Vashon (a very small one, but beautiful and inspiring), but the monks happened to be closed that day. (Traditionally, women are asked to cover their heads and wear modest dresses or skirts during visiting Russian Orthodox churches.) 

More photos from Point Robinson Lighthouse park in my JULY 2018 POST.

These couple of months have been really busy with work for me, especially March. It's been challenging, no pretending there, but also no complaints - it has been fun meeting great folks, new and old library colleagues, connecting with kids and their parents, finding new stories and figuring out who I am as a storyteller. I believe I shared with you before that my books are now in a couple of library systems in our state (Tacoma Public Library HERE and Puyallup Public Library HERE), and since we became finalists in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, Andrei and I also received these amazing medals, beautifully made in England especially for the finalists - they did a great job with it!

My book Anya and Her Wings / Аня и её крылышки

and myself at the library

While all of it sounds amazing and brings joy to my heart, please don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to tell you how perfect my life is. Believe me, it's far from it! I am still very much a work in progress as a person, as a fashionista, as a writer and as a storyteller, including my storyteller's sense of style and relationship with my wardrobe. To tell the truth, there were only a handful of outfits in a heavy rotation lately, I simply didn't have energy to pull off something extraordinary. I noticed that with me it's always like this: whenever creativity blossoms in one area, it slows down in another. So I mostly wore dresses (some of them you see here), thick tights and comfortable flat shoes for my library work. Sometimes I was bored wearing the same stuff over and over again, but didn't have time or rather inner focus or inspiration, or perhaps even courage to experiment, and didn't know what to wear at all. Go figure! After five years of blogging about style, I really wasn't ready for such a blackout, haha!

With the warmer weather, we opened our family's park season surprisingly early this year (there were a few days when it felt like Summer!), enjoying both the beach and the awakening woods. And of course it wouldn't be me if I didn't buy tickets to at least one show, even when I was crazily busy. This time, we watched Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music at Tacoma Little Theater. TLT is in its 100th Anniversary season now, and the show directed by John Munn was spectacular! I highly recommend, you can still catch it this weekend!

That's all for now, friends. "Phew,  just about time too!" perhaps, you said out loud, and I don't blame you! I just had to do a little catching up before my lovely partners in crime BEATE und TINA and I move on to the April Fools...or April Fashion, I can never remember.

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