![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_3\/2219_shawls.jpg\")
\nAnother thing that is near-permanently stationed next to my desk is my stack of shawls. This time of the year, especially in the morning, in this old and badly insulated house of ours, my “office” can be chilly.<\/p>\n
\nAnother thing that is near-permanently stationed next to my desk is my stack of shawls. This time of the year, especially in the morning, in this old and badly insulated house of ours, my “office” can be chilly.<\/p>\n
I’m also rather picky about my body temperature. I don’t like being even slightly too warm, no more than I like being slightly too cold. I’m often buttoning and unbuttoning my cardigans, adding a shawl, opening up the shawl, etc. Other people don’t seem to be so bothered, I think – I don’t see others (at work or at home) fiddling so much with their clothes. Or perhaps their bodies are better at regulating their temperatures.<\/p>\n
The flexibility that a shawl offers is unequalled by other garments. It’s so easy to shift the ends a little bit wider to let more body heat out, or wrap it more tightly around my shoulders to keep me warmer.<\/p>\n
The white one I knitted myself in a lovely silk and merino yarn in about 2002 or 2003. I remember working on it in our first apartment in London. The orange one I bought somewhere, probably London as well. The black and white and pink one has a design of large rose or peonies or something. I got as a Christmas gift from my mum.<\/p>\n
The best thing about them is that they’re all so luxuriously soft. I feel positively spoiled when I wear them. The next best thing is that they are so different. Whatever I’m wearing, one of these will look nice together with it.<\/p>\n
Women don’t use shawls so much these days, other than perhaps decoratively draping one over a ball gown. But in old photos you often see women wearing a shawl or a wrap as an outer layer, especially in wool-producing countries, ranging from Ireland to Ecuador and Nepal. A coat is more practical, so I can understand why this tradition is dying out. But there is a special cosiness about wrapping myself in a shawl that a cardigan or jacket can’t achieve, no matter how soft the material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another thing that is near-permanently stationed next to my desk is my stack of shawls. This time of the year, especially in the morning, in this old and badly insulated house of ours, my “office” can be chilly. I’m also rather picky about my body temperature. I don’t like being even slightly too warm, no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-observing_the_self","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14269,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14266\/revisions\/14269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}