The great wool purge of 2017 - or my body heat in synthetics

I have been slowing packing away all of my woollen clothing. It's a bit sad, but hopefully I'll be able to sell a few items on TradeMe and gift some others to The Little Madam.

The purge has left my wardrobe almost bare (thanks goodness I'll still be well clothed for summer), leaving me with a pretty minimal winter wardrobe:

• two skirts (one of which I just bought yesterday)
• one dress
• no cardigans
• a really nice shirt I got at the Tempest closing down sale
• one coat (warm enough when it's 12 degrees Celsius but useless in the rain)
• one raincoat that has a thin poly fleece lining
• one cotton scarf
• the few cotton/acrylic hats I managed to finish in the last week
• no arm warmers/handwarmers/wristwarmers
• only cotton socks
• 1 polypropylene top

I knew I would need to find another warm layer to supplement my remaining coat (viscose, polyester etc) and raincoat, to survive this weekend's bone-chilling temps. I was resigned to having to buy...sigh...a puffer jacket.

Gawd I hate puffer jackets. Maybe it's slightly unreasonable, since they are at least warm, light and sensitive skin-friendly. I managed to find one at the Kathmandu sale, one thats only thinly padded with down and shaped so that I look like a healthy adult female rather than a cushion on legs. In a pale aqua. It does the job I guess.

A wool-less winter is hell for a knitter

Now, right in the middle of winter and in our second bone-chilling storm in two weeks, I find out for sure that I am allergic to wool.

"But I always wear a cotton layer underneath!" I protested. My dermatologist assured me that this wouldn't make any difference.

This is devastating to me, not just because it's hard to keep warm when limited to cotton (because I hate poly fleece and hardly have any garments in this fibre), but because I now have to put all my lovely hand knit woollens away - possibly forever.

Not only can I no longer wear the boxy fair isle jumper that took two years to complete (and many others), but my wonderful Untouched World possum merino jacket that was a present from the boy, must also be packed away.

And my knitting. Almost of of my knitting projects have to be packed away indefinitely and I am now furiously knitting cotton hats to replace the merino ones that previously covered my naked head.

Ah well. I guess no-one ever died of being banned from wool.

Nardole and me

When I'm wearing my cropped duffel coat I look an awful lot like Nardole from Dr Who -

Our coats are even the very same colour! But mine has a hood on it. Also I don't wear glasses (except when I'm driving).

Seriously!

Gone today, hair tomorrow?

While waiting for a medical certificate that has the right information on it, I went down to my local wig shop to try some one.

It's not really a wig shop in the way that, say a cheese shop is full of many cheeses.They only have perhaps 6-8 wigs on display (and order in if you want something different and are prepared to commit yourself to buying it). Only one display wig was approximately the right length and only one (a different one) was approximately the right colour.

First I tried on the short one - it was a short bob in what I would call black. I looked in the mirror. Way, way too dark. Way, way too much hair.

Then I tried on the medium length one, a sort of shoulder-length shaggy do a with long fringe, but at least it was a nice dark chocolate colour with red bits in it (the colour my hair used to be maybe twenty years ago). Way, way too much hair.

The consultant used some sort of spray on one side and brushed that side down so it would look more flat (which is how my hair usually is, when I have any). Then it just looked overly thick and flat.

So I was a bit disappointed. Despite my earlier excitement at the prospect of luscious, wavy hair like I used to wish I had, when it came down to it I realised I just wanted to have hair as flat and straight and boring as my hair used to be (with slightly more volume). Because anything else just screams "WIG!".

So what do you think about this one?