So I've had this idea of purchasing a sideboard or a long thin side table for the living room for a while now, and last week it seemed like I had finally found something on Craigslist that fit my desires and budget. I found a very handsome dark-wood piece for just forty dollars and figured I'd lucked out. Unfortunately it turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought it would be, too big for what I wanted, and wouldn't have quite fit in my car anyway, so I regretfully passed on buying it. That left me with an extra forty dollars in my budget that I hadn't expected to have. So, of course, instead of saving it for rent or whatever, when I dropped off a couple of size-too-large sweaters at the thrift store, I allowed myself some time to browse to see if there was anything I liked.
I have to say, thrifting can be great when you're small. A lot of the time people who were small at some point don't stay small, so a lot of small clothes get donated, and of those people that used to be small, they were not usually small for long, so their small clothes tend to be less worn. An excellent example would be the really elegant pencil skirt I found. It's a dark green floral weave pattern on a black background, cut in the old-fashioned style all the way up to the true waist. Not as comfortable as hip-height, but very chic in a retro sort of way. And frankly if I were so much as an inch wider in the waist or even the hip, there would have been no chance of my fitting into it.
I've also had this bee in my bonnet about trying to incorporated dresses into my daily wardrobe, so I checked the dress racks as well. Of course I didn't find anything interesting that would be appropriate for day wear, but I did find a very sexy fancy black dress with an asymmetric hem and only one shoulder strap that fits me like a glove. I must find an excuse to wear this sometime soon. Amusingly, I chose it in part because it was a similar style and material to my beloved backless cocktail dress, and when I compared the two upon arriving home I realized it is the same brand.
The last thing I looked at were the sweaters. I'm interested in sweaters again as summer seems to have been blackbagged and kidnapped off somewhere already, and they're good for wearing to work. As I've said before, thrifting sweaters can be a tricky proposition, as they wear so badly that donated ones are often too stretched out to really look nice. But I actually got very lucky, finding an XS burgundy-purple Banana Republic v-neck made of merino wool. Merino is a lovely, maintainable material, and the cut was such that it would look equally nice worn alone, or with a collared blouse underneath it. Work-apparel score!
I had planned on the cavalcade of spending to end there, but not quite. Yesterday I went to Westborough to spend the evening hanging out with acousticshadow2*, and I got there crazy early because I misjudged how bad the traffic would be. We had a lovely time hanging out, hitting a coffee shop before having dinner at a place with the charmingly multicultural name of "Jose Murphy's," which offered a ten-cent taco night. It was a lot of fun, though I could have done without the rain driving down so hard that my windshield wipers literally could not work fast enough. But beforehand, while I waited for her to get off of work, I wandered around in some of the nearby stores in the plaza. One of which was a very interesting store filled up various kinds of unfinished pine furniture, and the second was a TJMaxx.
My mother tells me TJMaxx used to be a great place to find famous labels from last season at discounted prices, but in recent years department stores seem to mostly fill it with lower-end brands they couldn't get rid of in stores. Still, every now and then if you look carefully enough, you can find a gem. I found myself drawn to a display of lovely leather gloves in many interesting colors. I kind of wanted a bunch of the colors, because I like matching my gloves to my scarf when I'm bundled up against the cold, but I was drawn mostly, as usual, to the basic black. There was unfortunately no completely plain ones, which I would have preferred, but I did like the look of the ones with the slight gathering of material around the wrists. They were twenty dollars marked down from fifty, which for genuine leather with silk lining is not a bad deal. I really hadn't planned on buying anything else, but I've always wanted a pair of nice leather gloves, and I know I'll certainly wear them all winter. So in the end I went for it.
Though I'm not exactly thrilled at how easily the rarely-had extra cash slipped through my fingers, I am proud of myself for being able to find reasonably-priced items that please me, fit me, and will see actual use. So not a total loss, right?
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