One unexpected bonus of OWOP – a limited range of choices easily answered the ‘what do I wear for a conference presentation’ question!

OWOP Day 7 - a blurry photo of my phone

What else did I learn from OWOP?

• I really enjoyed putting on a dress the next day – it wasn’t so much I didn’t want to wear the knot tops again, but that I was bored with my bottom half options. Something to consider for wardrobe gap filling.
• I tend to recycle the same outfits over and over, especially for work.
• I need a new casual cardigan, and a new work cardigan. The black one I wear continually should have been replaced quite some time ago.
• I have enough knot tops to take me half way across the country and back.
• Plain and neutral colours are boring in photos.

A huge thank you to Tilly for all her coordination and enthusiasm about this idea. Oh, and the pie charts too!

Post OWOP – a little sightseeing around Alice Springs

After the conference finished and before my flight home, I walked down very early on Sunday morning to the local market which is held fortnightly. I had a good coffee and waited while the stall holders turned up and set up their stalls.

Silk scarves at the market

The Mekong Silk stall of silk scarves caught my eye and a two-toned one had to come home – it is wide enough and long enough to make a soft gathered or pleated skirt for dressy dinners. The darker colour is like the one in the second column from the left, five from the top – a brick red blending to a medium pink. I’ll use it like a border print. Would go beautifully with my white linen knot top

I see now from the website that the owner sources her products directly from the weavers in Laos. That makes me feel even better about my beautiful scarf/skirt-to-be.

The Todd River in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
It’s been a wetter than normal past 18 months apparently, explaining the green growth of the grasses along the river bed. One of the bridges across the river into town was not more than about 20cm/8inches above the sand. I’ve been told it’s rare to actually have water in the river so I was interested to see from the patterns in the sand that there were remaining marks from waterflow. Yeah, and footprints.

Todd River, Alice Springs

I got dressed and felt a bit plain – plain white top, plain grey work trousers (Clovers). Sigh. A necklace wasn’t going to work with this neckline ruling out my normal fix-it approach. So I wrapped a silk scarf around my wrist. Something I’ll do again – slightly quirky, colourful and doesn’t get in the way.

This is getting fun. Today I found out a colleague has been a member of Australian Sewing Guild and thinks the ASG convention she went to was the best conference ever. Funny how asking someone if they’ll be in your photo opens up different conversation rather than educational research.

Here’s my grey knot top interstate at a meeting today. Apologies for the shocking photo quality but I had to include Cheryl and her not-so-secret-anymore sewing background!

Knot top goes to Melbourne

Because the light was so dim inside, when I got home tonight I asked my son to take some photos but they turned out to be against the sun. Let’s pretend they are meant to be supersaturated and overexposed shall we? Today I just flipped the ties one over the other and it worked better than a knot on the bulky fabric. Note to self: Yeah, tidy the bench next time.

Day 4 was the day of the splodgy top. Here’s me in the garden after work. It works better with the black skirt than the speckled grey A line I wore for this day.

Look over there...

Only two more days to go and the white linen hasn’t even had a showing yet! The splodgy top will get the final day – a conference presentation in Alice Springs where it is forecast to be 34 degrees C.