four

earrings - Clementine via etsy / chambray shirt - Banana Republic, thrifted / tote - Forever 21 / ring - Amsterdam shop / overdyed skinnies - Zara / flats - UO

Today I decided to wear a Canadian Tuxedo in honor of Canada Day. Or perhaps I wore a Canadian Tuxedo, and then later realized it just happened to be Canada Day - I'll never tell. I will tell you that Chris said today that he liked this version more than the last time I rocked the double denim. He claims it's because he likes it more (or dislikes it less) when there's more contrast between the colors of the shirt and pants. I think really it's just that I'm wearing him down.

For the last day of Dress Your Best Week, I wanted to focus on a part of me that I find both beautiful and useful. Many of the other bloggers participating have highlighted their marathon-running legs, or the fairly miraculous fact that their bodies are currently in the business of making tiny people. These things are absolutely staggering to me, and I can't even imagine how such feats might alter the way one sees one's body. As I have yet to have children (and am unlikely ever to run a marathon), I decided to focus instead on a part of me that over time has become integral to my self-identity - my hands.

Small, beauty-marked, and scarred in places, my hands have done a lot for me over the years. They've drawn, painted, carved and etched in my art classes, they build models and memorize keyboard shortcuts for me at work, and they knit and crimp pastry at home. They learned how to cut glass, how to weld steel, and once wove the cane seat of a chaise lounge for 72 hours straight. They solder jewelry and sew zippers and give excellent back-scratches. In fact, the only thing I've ever asked them to do that they failed miserably at was to play the guitar (they were great for finger-picking, but far too small for bar chords).

For all that work, they remain (to me) rather lovely - not the longest, or most slender-fingered, but lately they're more and more recognizably my mother's hands, a resemblance I'm happy to embrace. I can't for the life of me seem to figure out how to photograph them (no future in hand-modeling for me!), but I wanted to give them the spotlight today with a big ring and some seriously bright green polish - and every time I catch that flash of chartreuse in the corner of my eye today, I get to reflect again on how much of me I define by the work of my hands.

Oh! And if you were wondering to what the title of this post refers, it's the number of coats of this polish I had to put on to get any kind of opacity. It's a good thing I still hadn't watched the last two episodes of Glee, or I would have gone nuts waiting for it to dry between coats!



To learn more about Dress Your Best, and to find other bloggers who are participating, please check out this post at academichic.