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Fashion Blog (Archive)
Friday, November 07, 2003
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at
11:36 AM (Pacific)
Yup verrry useful. Especially when the climate you live in has 6-month long Winters. Ok, maybe more like 4-5 months. It gets cold, rainy, icy, and snowy in November. Then it snows. December, January, February, March, it snows. Starts melting in April. Unless you get a freak snowstorm. Guess where I live... You know, that reminds me of some magazine features. On the one hand, you get these features about naked legs in Winter (tights are "out" some years). Say what? On the other hand, you get these features about dressing up for the cold. I've read things as ludicrous as "a wool coat won't cut it, you need fur or down". Ummmm, I wear a wool coat all Winter and I don't get cold! If you're going for some fun in the snow, sure break out the Sorel boots and the heavy duty snow clothes but if you're just in the city, you DON'T need the Sorel boots and fur coat!
Back to sweaters. I'm actually not always a fan of wool. It's itchy and it can pill. Nothing makes a sweater look old like pills. Acrylic is bad for that. Actually it's the worst. Too bad too because it's so comfy and warm. I've never had pilling problems with cotton sweaters. Only thing is, they don't give the same warm and fuzzy feeling that wool can give. So what do I do? I buy lots of cotton sweaters, some wool, some acrylic. The wool and acrylic ones get replaced often. I need to get something to get rid of pills. Those little shaver things don't work...
I have a sleevless sweater with some angora wool in it (70% I think). It's a nice mauvey almost white colour. It's meant to be a fancy Christmas top. Problem with this sweater: it's sleeveless so you freeze your arms off but if it's warm enough for your arms not to fall off like icicles, you're boiling hot and sweating under the sweater. And it leaves hairs all over the place! Oh, and it does pill. I still like it though :)
Oh, do you have a black turtleneck? A cotton one (because of the pilling thing). Slim-fitting. A black turtleneck is SOOOOO useful. It's elegant and effortless. It's worth it to spend a wee bit more to have a good one that'll last a good while and look really good. Mine was 25$CAN which, while not the type of bargains you're able to find, is a perfectly reasonable price for a turtleneck. I would have paid up to 35$CAN for one...
By the way, you do some impressive bargain shopping. I'm very bad at it. But I try:)
Oh, trick for calculating discounts. Say you have 30% off (pretty easy one). Just do 3 x 10%. 10% is the easiest of all. So let's say you have something that's 24$ (trying to make it harder). 10% would be 2.40$. Easy, right? Just divide by ten. Ok, so that's close to 2.50$. 3 times that is 7.50$. If you want to be anal, just remove the 30 extra cents and you have 7.20$. Which is closer to about 7$. So take that away from 24$ and you get 17$ (one thing that helps me with the subtraction is to think of it as looking for the missing term in an addition). To be exact, 16.80$.
It takes practice to do it in your head but you get good at it fast. I practice with adding 15% taxes. With 15%, it gets kind of trickier. On the same 24$, you'd have your 10% which is 2.40$. Since 15% is 10% + 5% and 5% is half of 10%, all you need to do is add half off 2.40$. So 5% would be 1.20$ and 15% would be 3.60$. I've impressed a cashier once by pulling out the exact amount with taxes from my wallet before she has even told me. Mental arithmetic is very fun once you get the hang of it. There are more tricks like this but this is the fashion blog. Not the geeky mathematician blog :)
Raphaelle who hopes noone found the math stuff condescending. I just enjoy explaining stuff :)
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