This shirt is one of several items I call "hand-me-ups" because I inherited them from my Sweet Girl. In the case of this particular shirt, I rescued it from suffering the fate of the school's Lost and Found bin.
Sweet Girl picked this shirt out at what was then her favorite clothing store (and mine, which made it almost instantly NOT her favorite anymore) when she was in about the 7th or 8th grade. (And she graduated from high school in 2002, so that should give you an indication of how ridiculously long I hold onto things I really like.) It was one of those things she JUST HAD TO HAVE and immediately decided she hated. Unfortunately she made that decision only after leaving the shirt to die a slow, cruel death in her locker at school. For months.
She never used her locker much, so at the end of the year I had to get the assistant principal to open her locker when she couldn't remember the combination. Or couldn't be bothered, I'm not sure which it was. (I worked at the same school, so it wasn't like I was one of those freakish mothers who show up at the end of every school year to clean out their kids' lockers. Wait...)
Anyway, he opened the locker for me, and there was this shirt, languishing among the algebra worksheets and history notes. The poor shirt that she JUST HAD TO HAVE. Since it had clearly been abandoned by its previous owner, I took possession of it.
I love this shirt for so many reasons, DESPITE the fact that it isn't much to look at. It's really more of a jacket than a shirt, but it isn't confining like a jacket. I always wear it over something else, and it is one of the warmest things I have ever owned. When Hubby and I used to go pick up firewood (before we decided it was worth it to have someone just deliver it to our house), I would always wear this shirt because it was warm but also allowed freedom of movement. I also like the fact that it zips, and it has those wonderfully convenient pockets.
I'm certainly no fashionista, but it's that time of year when I gravitate toward clothes that warm my heart as well as my body.
2 comments:
Me, too. I love things that warm me all the way through. Lately it has been vests, and I've just become the owner of two. I don't have anybody to cast things off, but if I did (like you) I think it would make them even more wonderful.
J surprised me the first time he went shopping at Goodwill. His technique is scoop up an armload of shirts in his size take them home, throw them in the washer. When he takes them out of the dryer he inspects them for rips, stains and missing buttons. He tries on the ones that make the cut and he usually ends up with 5 or 6 new/different shirts for $20. The last time he went, he passed over an old heavy wool work shirt and I nabbed it. Now it's my favorite warm cozy bumming around the house shirt. In some countries, clothes like these are referred to as dead men's shirts because they can't understand why someone would discard perfectly good clothing.
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