Saturday morning sunshine

As the sun streams through my dirty window panes I can look outside and see the leaves falling from the trees and the last few forlorn apples waiting for me to collect them and make applesauce.  Tonight we move the clocks back and tomorrow it officially the start of... what?

Autumn - bonfires, baked potatoes, soups, wooley jumpers and hats, scarves and gloves.  I have been knitting and have finally completed a completely great little scarf and wrist warmer set.  I feel quite inordinately pleased with this.  I have mentioned before how much of a starter I am and how rarely I finish things, so this is an accomplishment.  Autumn also means sorting out my drawers and cupboards.  I woke up this morning thinking about storage solutions.  Doesn't this sound like a marketing concept - storage solutions?  Does this mean I have to buy special boxes and bags to store my winter clothing in, or does it mean climbing into the loft, finding all the old suitcases and loading them up with summer gear?  Not sure yet.

I made these!

I am sure that I am not looking forward to going through my 'sock' drawer.  I have one drawer for socks, stockings and tights.  Most of these are in shades of black and once I start sorting I see that no two pairs of anything are alike.  There are dozens of pairs of almost matching socks, slightly the worse for wear black opaque tights, some that fit a thinner me, some that actually fit now.  I know exactly what will happen.  I empty the entire drawer on to my bed and begin to search for matching pairs.  I usually find some and then I begin to find wearable almost pairs, then I am left with the pile of odd socks.  What to do with these?  My tiny great-niece does not need a dozen black sock puppets, so in the bin they'll go.  The tights are more difficult.  I do, in the beginning, try them on, but how many times can you strip off one pair and put on another?  I feel like an elephantine burlesque star after a few pairs. Eventually all the ones with any runs or holes go in the bin and I am usually left with three or four useful items.  Sometimes I think I should throw everything away at the end of the winter and start again a year later.

This brings me to thinking about the autumnal palette of my clothes.  How many variations on black can there be?  My wardrobe is a costume shop for Greek widows.  In the cold dark mornings trying to find office-suitable clothes at the crack of dawn is a nightmare.  Everything looks the same, but slightly different.  I think it may be time for me to introduce more colour into my life, but which ones?

There is, it seems, no real solution to my storage problems.  Once a hoarder, always a hoarder.  I love buying clothes and  yesterday when I bought a new sweater and asked Ralph what he thought, his comment was, 'don't you have one exactly like that?' Not quite the compliment I was looking for, and no, I didn't have a sweater exactly the same, but a tee shirt that is remarkably similar.  Now maybe there's a solution.  Simply repeat the winter wardrobe  in the summer, but with clothes of different weights.  Substitute woolens for cottons and silks.  It might work, but again, it would mean me wearing black all year round, and as Ralph  pointed out, he's not dead yet, so please wait to put on my widow's weeds.

So off to the job at hand- maybe instead of sorting things out, I'll clean those grimy windows instead.  No point in wasting any of this precious sunlight.