preview

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On Monday I spirited away to Montpelier for a totally impromptu shoot with Brent. He messaged me on Facebook, and forty minutes later I was on the bus, because why the hell not? Brent and I have worked together on and off for three and a half years now, almost as long as I’ve been modeling, but it had been a while since the last one. I’d forgotten just how in sync our creative impulses are.

He’s still editing most of the photos (we took several hundred), but I’m happy to present the first few. Both the collages are edited by me.

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i’m officially writing a novel

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Title says it all, really. I know I talked a big game about said novel just a few posts ago, but I’m someone who tends to work in fits and starts. Or, more precisely, one big start and then a series of little fits until the whole project tapers. It’s hard for me to finish things, especially because my preferred literary medium is the short story. But I’m now over twenty pages in and I still haven’t gotten bored with the whole thing, so the chances are good that I’ll see it through to the bitter end.

It’s your bog standard New England gothic novel, except New England gothic novels are never really bog standard, are they? That’s the beauty of the genre: the eldritch can wear any face you want.

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Dress: vintage, via Sydney’s Vintage Clothing

Coat: vintage, for sale in my Etsy shop

Everything else: thrifted

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Here, have another excerpt!

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The Whitley twins had seen fairies in the wood. Matthew was sure of it.

Marty was less so. “Eyes in the trees could be anything, stupid.”

“No, there was a whole face,” his brother insisted. “I saw it. It saw me.”

The argument lasted late into the prickliest hours. So the next afternoon the Whitley boys invited Lyddie Howland, and Peter Willis, and Pamela Spurr whom nobody liked, to come and see. Pamela, for all her snits and scowls, was the top of Miss Hugh’s class and therefore the team’s begrudging expert. Matthew hoped to impress Lyddie, and Peter simply enjoyed a walk in the woods. His brothers were scouts and he pledged to be one himself someday, if his asthma ever lifted by medicine or miracle.

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They were wending across the tracks and down the slope to where the eyes had followed them. The twins had lured their party with nothing more than the promise of an adventure, and Matthew felt the moment had come for more.

“Wait ‘til you see,” he said, and felt a swelling in his chest. “Can you keep a secret?”

He paused, somber, trying not to look at Lyddie.

“There are fairies down there. Well, one, anyway. It looked right at me. It’s not every day they acknowledge humans.”

“All we know for sure,” Marty announced, is that there were eyes.” He rolled his own. “And that my brother’s an idiot. But you all decide that for yourselves.”

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“I believe in fairies,” Lyddie said. Matthew could have kissed her. “Sometimes I lose my books or my shoes and find them again somewhere I’d never have thought to look.”

“My dad does that when he drinks,” Peter said. “Maybe Lyddie’s a drunk!” He mimed opening a bottle and belched loudly. The boys laughed and the girls made faces, and the party of five entered the dell’s narrow ingress.

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war’s end

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This dress, every ’40s-fabulous inch, was twenty dollars. Twenty. I’m not sure how I ended up on a WWII reenactor site, but I’m not complaining. This beauty was right there on the front page, in my exact size. Every dot seemed a tiny eyeball, winking at me until the seduction proved overpowering. May I repeat: twenty dollars. “A fixer-upper”, the description said, and there’s certainly a seam coming loose here or there. But nothing I can’t fix, and actually pretty impressive for a ’40s dress. As a general rule, I don’t buy earlier than mid-fifties, unless it’s a collector’s item I’m not actually planning to wear. This dress, though, is in pretty solid condition. Come summer, I will curl my hair and wear it on the boardwalk of some kitschy maritime paradise. Maybe break a heart or three.

And I will definitely purchase from War’s End Shop again. Maybe I’ll even attend a WWII reenactment.

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Dress: vintage, via War’s End Shop

Hat & shawl: vintage, via brick-and-mortar store

Everything else: thrifted

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wine & dine

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Last week, Jenna from Fairmont Hotels contacted me about seeing my best take on a “wine & dine me” outfit. Her branch, in San Jose, CA, is hosting a dinner-and-drinks event this month, and she said she’d like to get a few bloggers’ takes on elegance for inspiration.

Now, I should mention that 1) I have never been to California, let alone San Jose, 2) I am not a West Coast sort of person, and 3) I have never stayed in a Fairmont hotel. But I am all for vintage elegance, and this seemed like a fun prompt, so I bit. Why not?

Fairmont’s San Jose branch reminded me a little of the castle from The Little Mermaid, so I decided to play up the Ariel thing. My hair’s getting long enough for comparisons now. And I finally got to make use of this vintage dress I thrifted for $4 over the summer.

Picdump incoming: I really, really liked these shots.

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Dress, hat, & pearls: vintage, thrifted

Shoes: won in a contest!

Everything else: thrifted

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beluga, sevruga, come winds of the caspian sea

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With her pervasive purpleness and queenly affect, Holly doesn’t need a lot of prep to become Ursula.

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I’ve been wondering for a while, though: where is the line between an artistically altered image – a blending of photography with other elements of storytelling – and an image that’s straight-up overshopped? I know badly ‘shopped pictures when I see them, but it’s a “frog in boiling water” thing: when I’m editing my own photos, I can’t tell when I’m crossing the line. Does anyone else struggle with this?

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this isn’t my actual halloween look

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I want that well and truly known. I still have a real costume coming to you sometime this week. These were just a few pictures I grabbed on-site at our haunt, between the Saturday matinee and the evening show. And then decided to make super-duper aggressively kitschy, because when else do I have a seasonally appropriate reason to do cheesy overlays, really?

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I’m meeeeeeeltiiiing!

ride with the moon in the dead of night

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I’m halfway done with shows, and I’ve had five precious days off! We start our second run tomorrow night, but I’m at least sort of rested this time. And I was free enough to have a photo day with Holly this past Sunday. Did you know that Ethan Allen is buried less than a mile from my house? Now you do!

(I once bragged about that to a friend from the Midwest, and he did not know who Ethan Allen was. Whaaat. You don’t grow up in Vermont without having half a dozen lessons per year on him.)

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Dress: vintage, via Soulrust 

Cape: from a friend

Everything else: thrifted

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