Doesn't it feel great to have cleared out the clothes you no long need?  I recently did this myself.  After losing almost 50 pounds, I finally had lost enough that I had no clothes that still fit well enough to be seen in public while wearing them.  I too, boxed them up all the clothes that were too big and donated them to charity.  I now have just 4 skirts, 2 jumpers, and 5 pair of pants and an assortment of tops and jackets to coordinate. 

Congrats to you on your sucessful transition to your simple clothing - I admire you for sticking to it and making it work for you.

bikerbraid: Congratulations for your weight loss! You've done great job!
And thank you for your nice words. It is nice to have a neat and orderly wardrobe for a change. Though, of course I'm glad I kept the old clothes around for a time. If my experiment had been less successful I could have easily gone back wearing them and would probably been quite happy.

I have never had a HP before, or a laptop. But, so far so good. I still marvel how smoothly this works. I had become used to my old computer being slow and weird. But, yesterday's typo was a Freudian one: getting Paintshop installed is still a problem. Maybe later today...

Hair: ...so that I could post you pictures of the new Ficcares I fetched today from Helsinki. They are wonderful!
I got:
-creme Ficcarissimo, size L. My first Ficcarissimo. I don't think I like the style as much as Maximas, but I do like the color (not available in Max). It is a warm off-white. Not pearlized like Honey Marble -which also looked a bit gray-ish to my eyes. A very nice basic clip that deserves a place in any collection.
-violet Maximas, size L. From the new Fall collection. The color is a cool plum violet. I had hoped it would have been a tad brighter, but this is ok too and contrasts my hair nicely. I think this color matches my eggplant dresses much better than the eggplant clip
-...which I also got, also in Maximas, size L. I really like this color, it's a cool navy blue that is a little lighter than true navy. After deciding that Blue Jean was too bright a blue for my tastes, I hoped that Ficcare would make a subtler blue clip. This is it!
-And last but certainly not least, I got 2-tone lavender Lotus max, size L. I have noticed LHC'rs rave about this clip, and now I understand why. This is a Really Gorgeous Clip. The colors, the Lotus design...the combination is just stunning. No pictures I've seen do any justice to this one.
    Since I was in Helsinki, I also visited Sokos and checked out their hairtoys. I found some terry cloth hairties that seemed just the right size to be used instead of elastics when doing updos. They even had them in light brown color that blends well with my hair. I hope they will work! They also had a very interesting clip, shaped like a Taiwan clip but a little smaller (which means it just might work for me) and more ornate. I bought it as well, in pretty pearlized white. Today my hair isn't very well behaving. It's clean, and seems to disapprove the cold. But tomorrow it should be perfect for trying out new styles and toys.

Crafts: Setting the computer up has taken so much time that I haven't had any time to sew. I've just knitted a little, but my cardigan progresses as snail-speed compared to the days before arrival of this computer. It looks promising though, I like how the color looks knitted.
   I visited Gehman's online fabric store, and bought flannels from them. Their flannel selection is small, but somehow they had just the kind of fabrics I had had in mind for my and T's pajamas. The weather is cold now, and I think I better not expect long-term improvement in it before spring. So since I've now got patterns for pajamas, I might as well add them to my sewing list.

No Paintshop yet...

Hair: But I've finally discovered the one thing for which my teflon hair is perfect! Headbanging!
We went to see the folk metal band Turisas who performed yesterday in Helsinki. The gig was fantastic! As the crowd went crazy, even I found myself doing some serious headbanging. I was afraid it would mean a long, painful combing session but no! My hair was perfectly fine afterwards. Hee hee...can't wait the next opportunity.
      To my surprise I discovered, that my hair was long even in metal scene standards. "Nemis" (goth girls with very long black locks) seem to have disappeared. BSL length hair was common on both males and females, but I saw only one head of hair that was a tad longer than that (my hair, of course, excluded!) That was a bit of a surprise. Most common length on ladies seemed to be around shoulders- the trend has gone quite a bit shorter lately.
      I also came to the conclusion that my hair looks great down. While I'm home alone, my only longhair reference are the heads of gorgeous longhairs of virtual world. So my idea of how my hair does in comparison has been quite modest. It's not super anything (except perhaps super slippery). But the situation changes quite dramatically when I actually go out in the Big City. Suddenly, my hair is super everything compared to other people. It is long. It is shiny and healthy and beautiful. It is the most beautiful thing about me and a true ego booster.

Speaking of ego boosters, I had a hair cutting nightmare on the night before yesterday. It was quite amusing (once I had woken up and sighed from relief after finding that I still had my ponytail intact).

Today is a day when my hair makes me happy.

I have to agree with jerry, there. That sounds like it was an awesome time. Somehow I think, though, that headbanging is not in my future, LOL. My hair tangles when it is braided.

It was one of the best gigs I've ever seen. This band is definitely worth keeping an eye on. What amazed me most was, that Warlord Nygård sings/growls/whatever live just as well as on the album . He now occupies the top of my "best male singer" chart.
    Speaking of music, I've now listened ex-Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen's new album My Winter Storm. Or, to be truthful, just half of it because I got dreadfully bored by the middle of it. Nothing wrong with Tarja's voice, it is as beautiful as ever, but the songs sound all the same. Not awesome-same either. The first word that comes in my mind is commercial.The style is a water-diluted mix of commercial metal and boring movie scores: no personality, no direction, no passion. Tarja is like a girl asking "Does my voice look good in this?" while knowing perfectly well it does because the songs are all the same. I think T hit the nail in the head when he said that Tarja needs a master composer (say, Tuomas Holopainen) to bring out the best in her voice and performance. She better continue her search.

Hair: Slightly dirty today and therefore the great hair feeling is leaving me. I finished sewing the aubergine dress and as I thought, the violet Ficcare matches it better than the eggplant one.

Still no Paintshop. I'm getting frustrated...

I'm sure we all do. I'm not usually impressed by hair I see in real life, or the magazines (most magazine hair is heavily photoshopped, styled and colored in a way that doesn't impress me) but longhair sites are full of awesome hair.

Today, I was in Helsinki all day. No fun though, it was a meeting of The Board. I'd enjoyed better being closed into a closet with a poltergeist. But it's not about enjoyment...and so, after the long meeting was over, I headed straight to the bus station. My luck that the Interesting Department Store (Sokos) is directly on my way, so I did grab another pretty clip on my way through. This one is a beautiful shade of grayish-blue. Nice color, and I even think this clip is my only hairtoy in that color.  I hope I will be able to do a bit more shopping sometime next week. Style of the day was a knot bun with silver Ficcare. I just wanted a sturdy style that wouldn't give me any trouble during the day.

I thought I was the last person on earth (other than my hubby) that still used cloth hankies!     I much prefer them to scratchy paper products.