(New) Biking in Heels

So, my birthday presents from my parents last year were a bit delayed.  My dad promised to buy me a bike, my mom promised that we would get matching tattoos.  About 5 months later, on my 6 monthiversary with the boyfriend, I received my awesome vintage bike, and went for a ride with my family and said boyfriend.  I love this thing!  I spent a decent bit of the summer fixing the brakes, but otherwise this thing is just lovely.  Of course, it won't do for any mountain biking, but for fashion, is it the best accessory a girl could wish for.  I am most excited that it will work for any steampunk excursions =)  For instance, although they are not pictured I now have a gold-colored bell and a leather pouch in the back that is perfect for sunglasses, cell phones, keys, etc.

Now, for the outfit...

red-orange corduroy blazer : Goodwill

green tank top with lace and buttons : hand-me-down from Gabby

ripped jeans : childhood momento that my mother has confiscated once again

brown Sketchers heels : Goodwill or something (yes, they are Sketchers--how sporty!)

orange scarf : hand-me-down from my grandmother

multicolored bangles : collected as a child

orange tag necklace : handmade by yours truly, featuring the boyfriend's name and class ring

sunglasses and helmet : hand-me-down from Ima

On a relatively interesting side note, Ima and I went to meet briefly with the tattoo artist yesterday--which also happens to be my 11 monthiversary with Boyfriend.  If I were to call this irony, would that be like if I posted something as my friend on Facebook because she forgot to log out, and called it hacking?

Green Beverage Day

Unless I (and Wikipedia) am (are) quite mistaken, my school is credited with the invention of Green Beer Day in 1952.  So this is my tribute to GBD 2012.  Corset!  Yeah.  ;)

purple 3/4 sleeve top : Old Navy
black and brown foliage corset : eBay (it is VERY well made, and only cost me like $10)
taupe pants : hand-me-down from Ima
green 3/4 sleeve jacket : Targét
choker necklace with gear : handmade by yours truly!
silver clay compass necklace : gift from Ima

Circuitry For You

The modem thingy.

The circuit board, removed.

The $4-ish shirt from Slobby Lobby.

The general idea.

How I plan to make it work.

Circuit board city!

Finished, fig1!

Finished, fig2!

This is a shirt that I made for Boyfriend last year.  I took apart an old modem-type thing and bought a few things from the local craft store (a t-shirt, fluffy backing stuff, and velcro squares).  The backing is used to protect one's chest from all the pokey bits on the back of the circuit board.  The velcro is obviously used to affix it to the shirt.  Perhaps the cleverest part, in my opinion, is the fact that it is entirely washable.  With the velcro, the circuit board can be detached from the shirt.  One important part was to sew the velcro onto both the shirt and the backing.  The squares I bought came with sticky backing so for some applications, sewing is not necessary but with all the wear and tear I would expect it to take in this project, I figured it would be best.  Unfortunately, the stickiness made sewing quite difficult--I had to do it by hand, and the needle kept getting incredibly gunked up.  I poked my fingers several times =(  BUT, the end project was so worth it, and in the past 8 or 9 months since I gave it to him, the boyfriend has worn it all of two times!  Maybe.  >.>

Modest Stripes

 

Once again at my grandmother's, here are a couple of pieces from the shopping spree.  The top has these awesome bronze buttons on the right side of the neck, and an embroidered patch over the left breast.  I absolutely love the skirt--even though it's a little large, with a pair of leggings it settles low on my hips and reaches far enough beneath my knees to be acceptable.

Prada Bag and Purple Hair

Another modesty outfit, mixing patterns while maintaining a general color scheme.  Here I am at my grandmother's house, having recently returned from a Goodwill modesty shopping spree.  I found this 'vintage' Prada knapsack for only $7 or $8, in excellent condition.  I found another one online for a comprable price, but mine has a gold lining inside (instead of silver) and the straps on the other one were fifty shades of messed up.

cream and navy striped shirt : Goodwill
yellow and green flower skirt : Valley Thrift
charcoal thigh highs with blue and green argyle : Targét, perhaps?
aqua-green scarf with silver threading : some little store in Israel

Also, you may note my recently dyed purple hair.  These pictures are actually from almost a year ago, so I feel perfectly fine saying that I once again have awful bangs!

Vintage Riding Boots

 

Heyo, new boots!  Well, old boots!  My mother and I ventured out into our small town and decided to check out one of its few local charms, the vintage store.  There, I found these sweet leather riding boots.  While they were an absolute pain to get on (and off again), it was well worth the struggle to find that they fit me perfectly.  The inside of the upper calves are worn smooth, presumably from repeated contact with a saddle.  All in all, they are in fabulous shape.

Eitz Chayim

In doing this whole modesty thing, I've already begun to run into a number of challenges.  I've found myself imagining what I will do once the year is up.  Some ideas I have considered include maintaining a level of modesty that involves pants, exposed collars (but no cleavage), exposed elbows (but no shoulders), as well as a number of alternatives in between such as see-through sleeves.


I am very curious to see what I think about this in a week, a month, six months.  I will probably have a change of heart here or there, but I absolutely refuse to give up.  I will dress modestly for a year, but I will not do so blindly.  I will acknowledge all the feelings I have toward it, and respond to them.

Chill Out!

Sometimes, when I get stressed or it is hot outside, I get overheated.  Apparently, if the past couple of days have been any indication, I am going to be running into this problem a lot over the next year.  I can only push my sleeves up so far, pull my skirt up so high.  So what can I do to get the quick cool-down?  A couple of useful tricks that I actually began doing about a year ago!  One is pretty obvious--get hair off the neck!  Put it up in a ponytail, sweep it off to the side and over one shoulder, whatever!  The back of the neck is extremely sensitive to coolness, and so it is a quick and easy way to literally chill out.  In addition to getting the hair up, run hands under cool water and place them on the back of the neck.  Rather like touching someone's neck with icy hands, this will make your body feel a lot cooler.


My other technique can be a lot more challenging, and requires not hair ties or cold hands, but a little bit of patience.  Whatever is stressing me out usually seems to increase my body temperature, and forcing myself to relax, breathe, and let everything slip away is a surefire way to lower that temperature.  I have found that this actually also works in hot weather!

Breaking In

I'm really surprised at how the modesty thing is affecting me.  Last night, I honestly could not bring myself to wear pants to bed, so I made myself a skirt out of my little sister's old bed sheet (not pictured...haha).  I really think that this trip to Goodwill is going to have to happen soon--even with the 10 or so modest skirts I own, it is hard to match them to a modest top and still be fashionable.  I also do not want to run into the sleep-skirt issue again.  Perhaps I'll invest in some really awful looking nightgowns....


Note--this is the second appearance in two days of the orange bandana.  This is not due to any misunderstanding with regards to who needs to cover their hair (ans:  married women), but simply because I enjoy the way it looks. :)

Work

The first day of work since I began dressing modestly.  Initially I had planned on accepting the fact that I had to wear pants at work.  I would wear a skirt to work, clock in, change, work, change again, and clock out.  Then I decided, after doing a bit of reading on the internet about women and wearing pants, that I would feel much more comfortable wearing a skirt that covered my knees--and happening to have pants on underneath.


To expand on some things I might have said earlier, I can't remember, I want to clarify exactly what is or isn't okay.  I went into detail on my other blog (see A Modest Mitzvah) about what is or isn't okay for a modest Jewish woman to wear.  I didn't really discuss pants much, and as you can see, this issue has come up.  The whole thing about not wearing pants stems from the instruction that women should not don men's clothing, and vice versa.  Of course, the Jews recognize that as times have moved on, pants for women became more common, until they began making them specifically for women.  These days, depending on the rules of ones community, a woman may or may not be able to get away with wearing loose, non-sexy pants.


In any event, I wore this outfit (san-bandana) to work on Sunday, and got no comments about the skirt.  Success!  I can both respect the work safety policy and express my religious freedom at the same time!

Days of White Part 1

This is already beginning to present a challenge.  I don't have a lot of dressy, modest clothing, let alone white dressy, modest clothing.  I see a trip to Goodwill will be in store for me (ha ha), but unfortunately not before Yom Kippur.


Some Jews observe the tradition of wearing white only on Yom Kippur, while some others will wear white both days (as I do), and still others don't wear white at all (generally, this last category doesn't even know about the tradition).  I went to Rosh Hashanah services at my university's Hillel with my brother, and we both wore white.  A peer commented to him something along the lines of "nice white, wrong holiday".  For all of two seconds I contemplated feeling silly, before remembering that one could wear white both holidays.  Not only that, but my wearing white actually made me feel more connected to the holiday.  Rosh Hashanah is probably the second most important Jewish holiday, after Yom Kippur.  Forcing myself to find appropriate white clothing caused my thoughts to dwell on where exactly I was going, more.  What exactly I would be doing there.


I also wore the tallit and matching kippah that I got when I became a bat mitzvah.  While I only wore the tallit during services, I proceeded to wear the kippah throughout the rest of the day (yes, I went to a class...)


On an utterly unrelated note, I believe that this year, rather than detailing what I'm wearing in each outfit, I will try to spend more time writing about the daily implications of said outfits.

L'Shana Tovah! Beginning a Year of Modesty

The Jewish new year begins tonight at sundown, and I am beginning my year of modest dress.  For more information, see my philosophical blog here.


off-white sweater : Goodwill
light blue pirate shirt : hand-me-down from a friend
ankle-length green skirt : hand-me-down from Ima
black and gray striped stockings : Hot Topic
gray knock-off chucks : W*****t

Mister Professor Sir

teal button up : Valley Thrift
black, blue & gold vest : hand-me-down from a friend
bottle cap vest clasp : handmade by yours truly
cream pleated skirt : Goodwill
brown woven tights : gift from step mom--apparently Italian-made
brown steampunk boots : eBay