Advanced style (do it yourself)

I've been looking for a retailer that carries mid-price, fairly aggressive fashion for women over 50.

Instead, I find a lot of dorky tailored and embroidered denim, relentlessly cheerful prints and patterns in ugly barn red (like this ghastly acryllic sweater from Clearwater Creek), and shiny, flimsy stretchy knits (Chico's Travelers line). Most of it matches and coordinates, making it the kiss of death now that everyone under 40 is wearing "nothing matches" outfits.

My solution is to buy plain, natural fiber stuff from Eddie Bauer and Gap (they offer petite sizes and a variety of pant lengths) and mix it in with designer and vintage pieces I pick up at consignment shops and Seattle-area artisan seamstresses. I also look at Sundance catalog for ideas, though their clothes are not designed for short women.

I used to buy a lot from J. Jill. They're known for incorporating up-to-the minute details (gathers, trims, buttons, raw seams, etc.) into classic styles, and they keep the pieces professional (no plunging V-necks, sheer fabrics, etc.). J. Jill is also known for using 50+ models with gray hair — a few years back, their iconic lead model was Cindy Joseph, profiled here in the new Experience Life magazine. Unfortunately for me, for the past few seasons J. Jill has been making much of their clothing in cream, beige, and pastels — a palette that just doesn't work for my hair color and skin tone.

If you think the stores are slim pickings in terms of trendy "grown up" fashion, the websites for fashion for women over 40 or 50 are ghastly. Google the terms "fashion" and "older women" and you'll find appallingly designed websites with pink backgrounds filled with patronizing "articles" that counsel you to dress in classic, dark colors, and cover up everything that might offend younger people (that would be your arms, legs, neck, feet, torso and "lank, thinning" hair). Think "burka."

So I was thrilled to find Ari Seth Cohen's blog Advanced Style. It's filled with photos of women and men from their 50s into their 90s wearing high fashion. Some of the women are sporting very colorful, eclectic vintage clothes; others are wearing more of the European natural-fiber look that I admire. You'll see colorful knits, fabulous boots, sharp vests, and all sort of inspiring fashion items.

I'm going to be 55 next month. I hope I look as good as this or this at 60! (And check out this inspiring fashionista in the leather skirt. She's is 82!)

Horrors

I can't let a month go by without a blog post (well, I nearly did).

I just shed a couple of low-return business projects in the hopes of being able to cope with growing workloads from two high-return clients. A third high-return client promptly appeared — with a project that will require me to appear on site twice a week. The "site" is a traditional government office building in Olympia.

This led me to check my wardrobe. I've been wearing jeans and cords for the past three years, and this isn't a jeans-type job.

Fortunately, I found four skirts, three pair of pants, and tons of tops, sweaters, and jackets that look sufficiently professional and aren't too terribly out of date. Interestingly, they're all either black, green, brown, grey, or red. (No wonder I like fall, and hate dressing for spring.)

I never liked diets

And here's one I really can't handle: The Great American Apparel Diet.

The women who put together this blog have vowed not to buy any new clothes (excluding things like underwear) for a year. I'll be curious to see how this turns out.

Walk with me

This article in Shine quotes a Rutgers researcher who explains why couples who exercise together are also more connected. (The comments readers have on the article shed light on why couples who don't exercise together might get disconnected!)

I go to belly dancing and power yoga classes on my own, but once a week the Scholarly Gentleman and I take an Iyengar yoga class together.

How much does this help our relationship? Not sure. But I have noticed that it helps us come home from class and prepare and enjoy a much healthier dinner than we would usually eat. Last night I stir fried garlic, a hot pepper, ginger, carrots, zucchini, cabbage, and tofu with a mushroom broth sauce. This is a Szechuan recipe I learned from a New Haven restaurant and martial arts center many years ago. We put the stir-fry on brown rice, and it was delicious.

The holidays are coming: Cookies!

Was it really three years ago that I wrote about cookie decorating for Joe Kissell's Geeky Gourmet site? Since then, I've discovered I don't really like cookies that much. But I was glad that I finally cracked the mystery of how to get them perfectly decorated.

Flow yoga

Susan Powter stopped teaching her Fremont yoga class last month, so I've been back to belly dancing at Visionary Dance studios, taking the Power Belly class (belly dancing with a special weight belt) on Thursday evenings. I'm also doing Iyengar yoga at Taj Yoga at the Crown Hill Community Center on Mondays.

But I really miss the Ashtanga and Vinyasa styles of yoga that Susan was doing with us because they provide a tougher workout.

If you've read this blog much, you know that one of the biggest barriers to exercise for me is getting comfortable in a new class environment. A new studio. Strange classmates. A new teacher, with new terminology.

But somehow I got myself over to the Power Flow Yoga class at 11:30 a.m. at Ballard Health Club. Outstanding! The instructor, Carl, teaches the Baron Baptiste type of power vinyasa flow yoga; I'd read Baptiste's book, but had never done one of the classes. I found it to be completely do-able, and I hope to become a regular on Sundays. I encountered a couple of new poses, including The Fish.

And I liked the studio at the Ballard Health Club. It's underground, has a great sound system, and they dim the lights, and it's very easy to forget the rest of the world and focus on the workout...er, the practice. Susan used to have us work out to rock and hip hop, which I loved. Carl uses Nick Drake-style indie pop tunes, and that was a pleasant surprise.

Ballard Health Club offers several yoga classes including Power Yoga Wednesday evenings, Saturday mornings, and Sunday afternoons and Carl's Power Flow Yoga on Sundays (late morning). The club also has a variety of payment options, including memberships, drop-in, etc., this some of the most affordable yoga in town.

Grapes

I have a love/hate relationship with the grapevine. It came with the house, and every other year, it has lots of grapes. They're Candice (also Canadice and Candace) grapes — a red grape that makes a wildly colored pink grape juice.

The vines get pruned every January or February. This year I was sure I'd pruned too harshly — all the way back to old wood — but there are certainly plenty of grapes now. Go figure.

The vine is trained to a high arbor, so harvesting the grapes involves climbing a fairly large ladder and plunging my head and arms into a jungle of grape leaves. Once a cluster of grapes is clipped, it then needs to be lowered through the tangle of vines, grapes, leaves, and arbor structure to a basket. This results in a hail of grapes, with about 3/4 actually making it into the basket.

One year I was snipping away at the grapes when I realized a pair of eyes were staring at me from the grape leaves — one of the cats had clambered up into the arbor to "help" me.

I harvested about half of the grape crop this past weekend, and have been giving grapes to the neighbors.

Candice grapes are supposedly a fairly unusual variety, but I saw some Candice vines for sale in the garden shop at the Ballard Market last week. This is your chance to embark on a love/hate relationship with a grapevine. Don't miss out.