woke up from a dream considerably upset about neck ties. i was going to a dinner which had something to do with education and i had both my raffles ties and an orange and blue one in my bag because i didn't know which to wear. and this is absurd because at that point in the dream i had on my rgs pinafore so it had to be one of the raffles ties (later it became a white shirt sort of like the rj formal uniform so there was a choice) and anyway what does it matter virginia didn't have a uniform and i wouldn't recognise anyone by their ties and cindy just told me that uiuc has blue and orange too. besides which even if i did own a uva tie it is obvious i would wear the the raffles tie which is nicer and why on earth would i wear a tie anyway wouldn't a green or black or white dress serve? we were approaching the dinner and i'm in the car changing ties and finally settled for the uva. was half-hiding behind a potted plant trying to put it on but had no end of trouble knotting it, it kept coming out funny shaped or else the lengths were uneven or i couldn't get the little dent under the knot to form nicely and the men around were looking on skeptically and i was trying to do it quickly before someone offered to help. so i woke up considerably upset wanting to demonstrate that i can too tie tie knots, but of course i haven't a tie. which means that at some point today i will have to go to von's and swipe one of his. and now i shall go back to bed

addendum at 9 am. resume: can do windsor, half-windsor, four-in-hand, and slight variations on them. was taught to knot a tie (windsor) by an uncle, didn't like it and anyway our uniforms didn't have sprawling collars, discovered the half windsor and four-in-hand by watching the way other people did it, was much pleased because generally like things that are slightly asymmetrical, although according to von i can't do a four-in-hand properly - the criticism i recall was that it came out too much like a parallelogram, but then what does he know he saw me do it on a thin and floppy shawl of course the knot looked funny. all will be cleared up when i get hold of a tie.