I have three weights of coat that I wear outside, when I wear a coat at all. Really, I have five iterations of above-the-waist-wear: short-sleeved shirt, long-sleeved shirt, long-sleeved shirt with a sweater or windbreaker, long-sleeved shirt with my boiled-wool mid-weight jacket, and long-sleeved shirt with parka. That's it.
It was 50°F this afternoon as I took Anya and Daniel to the dog park. Boiled-wool-jacket weather, probably the last for a couple months. Absolutely glorious. Very odd for Minneapolis the day after Christmas—I think we broke the record for the day, set in 1936—but absolutely lovely. We drop down to 20°F tonight as a front rolls through, and we're back to normal tomorrow, not getting above freezing.
I'm sure serious outdoor folks shake their heads when they see my overly-simple top-half recipe above. And they're right: I don't dress for sustained exercise outdoors. I know that if I did, I should learn to layer. That's the gospel from the world of mountaineering and high-altitude hiking. My parents layer every day, around the house.
Did Native Americans layer, pre-European contact? I mean tribal groups like the Ojibwe and Dakota who lived up here in the snowy climes. There's good documentation on Inuit clothing (layering in spades), for example here, but not much on groups further south.
And the European layerings we've largely inherited... where did these come from? It strikes me that what we wear now is variously cobbled together from a bunch of Northern cultures: Scandianvian sweaters with North American mukluks, Russian hats and Scottish woolen scarves... all accompanied by fibers that were invented only a generation or two ago.
Maybe we need to look form by form for a sense of where things came from. Ingrid has recommended Womens Work by Elizabeth Wayland Barber as a great source on this history of fiber and clothing. I'll start in on it tonight. One piece I'm especially interested in: the comparative newness of knitting.
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