looking back, peering ahead, year-end thoughts

It's the time of year for retrospection - magazines,  newspapers, print and web, look back and tell us the year's twelve best this and twelve worst thats. I have my own little bunch of non-repeatables, mistakes I won't make again.

For instance, after only two wears, this sweater

required some very serious grooming.

bad lighting, didn't want Himself to notice
that I was actually photographing this

It's generally acknowledged that the Target/Neiman Marcus Christmas-time collaboration was a bust, with minor exceptions for some cute dishes. I won't stay up late waiting to play the iPad off the big computer again, that's for sure. I did that with great success on the Target/Liberty collaboration, the shirts have worn like iron, the little hats for the Teeniest Gluttons are still being passed around, and I have .... but those days are past.

This year's J.Crew collaborations have  had mixed results at best. Signor Blahnik was a perfect gentleman, most of the Altuzarra pieces lingered in mark-downs, and I still don't get droopy pants. A quick survey of the web shows that a solid majority of people who are interested enough to mention those, agree with me. And the Margaret Annie shirt that I stalked with such deranged hope  and determination - markdown and promo. I am proud of having avoided the H&M collabs, though.

What will I do again? Well, when it comes to food, I have developed "mental tastebuds" that tell me that when I didn't care for the taste of moss and lichen in the Pioneer unit at Girl Scout camp, I will like it even less when it costs $80 the plate at a trendy restaurant. I want to develop another set of "tastebuds" that will be as sharp and self-protective when it comes to fashion consumerism. As much as I rant when I make a mistake, or have a narrow escape, I have not learned enough. This strikes me as odd, because I learned early on that "local specialty reserved for honored guests" is just as likely to mean "kitchen staff is lined up staring through the pass to see if you'll actually let it near your mouth" as it is to mean "we hope you'll come back for a social visit when things are quieter." I have this sense when I pass a store window, I have this sense when I scoot through a store,  but this past year most of my daytime hours were otherwise committed and much shopping took place at very odd hours. Thus I learned that I need to develop my protective instinct to work more effectively from catalog shots.

That protective instinct may be shaping up, after all, because when I saw a $1500 (YES, $1500) alligator Edie bag at the J.Crew Madison Avenue Collection Store, in a lovely muted olive color, I decided I was hallucinating, completed my return and fled. A day or two later, I poked my head in, and they had the same bag - $1500 (YES, $1500) - in a lovely bordeaux color. The hardware is your basic Edie bag hardware, and when we get into this price point, I would like to see a real leather lining - I said see, not buy - and so I didn't even start to do the math on my student/teacher discount, or to wonder if this would look shopworn by the time it reached second markdown. This morning I learned that I had not been hallucinating after all. The Huffington Post has picked up on the bag, and makes the unsurprising point that this is a lot of money to spend on a J.Crew bag. Someone at HuffPo must have sworn that she's clipped off her last dangling thread.

I got tired of  the jean-jacket-over-everything look at about the same time I wearied of the gray-tee-over-everything look, so it's with a touch of regret that I note an early sign of the return of the jean-jacket-over-everything. A little too reminiscent of desperate suitcase stuffing, I think. Or perhaps She Who Must Be Adored is, after all, a One-Trick Pony.

2012 was going to be the year when I got back into Real Cooking and Had People Over. What happened in real life, was that People did not cooperate. They had Food Intolerances, odd part-time employment, awkward relationships. I'm going to try again on this one, because I still think it's worth trying.

Travel plans for 2013 - none yet, except for family visits. I 'm glad we did what we did when we did it. A friend used to say that when the Texas state legislature was in session, no man, woman or child was safe. I'm feeling that way about Washington. Then again, I'm still on my first cup of coffee and haven't yet turned on the news.