I have never been much of a big fan of purple. In fact, a quick scan of my closet shows a grand total of one purple sweatshirt at the bottom of a pile. I'm not really sure how it got there.

Recently, it came to my attention that I needed some winter boots. Winter was coming and I didn't have any boots. I happened to be near a Winners store at the time. So I went into Winners and found boots that matched four of my five criteria:

1. Warm (rated to at least -30 Celcius) - check

2. Waterproof (I splash in puddles sometimes) - check

3. Good treads (I'm not very graceful on slippery surfaces) - check

4. Not horribly expensive (I'm cheap, and Winners sells stuff pretty cheap) - check

5. Bearable to look at (I have some pride, after all) - X

It turns out, if I wanted to be warm, dry, and safe from ice for a reasonable price, I'd have to live with boots that were light purple and lighter purple. The other four criteria won out. Hence, my new boots:

After this auspicious purchase, I realized that I was wearing a purple scarf, too. I retraced the events that led to the purple scarf, and realized I hadn't purchased it for its colour, either. I had been on a business trip and lost my beautiful, warm, red scarf somewhere along the way, and was about to head to Yellowknife, NWT. where temperatures can get as low as -25 at the beginning of April. So, I headed out in Calgary at the end of March, when winter was all but over, and could only find one warm scarf. Purple. I still wear it, though, because it does the job, and as discussed already, I'm cheap.

Then, the other day as I was getting ready to leave work in my purple boots and purple scarf, I noticed that my glasses case on my desk was purple. Another thing I didn't choose - the store where I bought my glasses just happened to give them to me in the purple case. And I'm too cheap to buy another case.

(OK, so I realize that this case is not purple. I was taking these pictures at home and these are the glasses I keep in the car, not at work. Note the case is a lovely red.)

And so, I trundle along, with an increasingly purple wardrobe, through no design of my own. Now, if only I can figure out how I came to have that purple sweatshirt...