Libraries of Threadbare Garments

It's that time of year again.  The time of year when my moccasins are pretty much the only shoes I wear.  I love how moccasins "petina" over time.  When I bought my bridesmaids each a pair of moccasins for my wedding, I bought the exact same color that I have, but they were so light that I thought I'd bought a different color!  One of my bridesmaids just posted a photo of her moccs on facebook and they're now the exact same color as mine.

I was talking with a friend about this part in Walden where Thoreau talks about clothes being worn thin and having to patch them and we were joking about this shirt Dan had that was literally disintegrating.  He was saying how he loves seeing wear and tear on old, loved items of clothing and remembering how each mark, tear, or imperfection got there.  A whole library of life stories in each weathered item of clothing.  I love that about clothes.  With blogging, it's easy to think back to the last time I wore a certain item of clothing, or significant events linked to certain pieces of clothing.  I haven't worn this skirt on the blog a ton, but I remember one of my favorite outfits involving this skirt from two summers ago, when I was living in AK right before leaving on the Winne trip.

top / forever 21 :: skirt / thrifted :: cardigan / courtesy of modcloth :: shoes / minnetonka

Lately I've been thinking a lot about moving back to Alaska.  Who knows if it's ever going to be in the cards for us, but I think I'd probably be sad if I never lived there again.  Maybe it's just all this thinking about simplifying life, reading Walden, my visit last month, and poring through Backwoods Mom that's got me all atwitter for the last frontier again.  I've been reminiscing about my time hanging out in Talkeetna with friends who were living in a yurt for the summer.  Dan spent a summer in Talkeetna back in 2008, and while I've spent quite a bit of time visiting friends who were living there, I've never lived there.  I'd love to try and spend next summer up there.  But we'll see.  That's a long time off.  I don't even know what we're doing when our lease is up in September!  Dan keeps throwing out there that we should live in the Winne, which I'd love to do.  I haven't been able to figure out how to do it while living in Tacoma, unless one of our friends wants to rent out a 22 ft patch of backyard to us and let us use their hose and electricity.  But man, would that be magical.