one for Petey

A short-short story I wrote in November 2001 at 4:52 pm.

Breakfast.


Joanna looked at her dining room and decided they would eat there this morning. Not at either end of the table the way she and her late husband did, always formal. They would sit across the middle, close yet individual.

The breakfast would be a little plain, english muffins and coffee and the Sunday paper. She was so glad she had splurged for home delivery of The Sunday New York Times. She would have a tussle with him over the Arts section. Hm. That never had happened with John. He was a front page junkie. Editorials came second and the rest of the paper could rot.

She was toasting english muffins for someone else, another wonderful man, and using John's table informally. She had thought, a whimsy after John died, to copy an idea she'd seen in a decorating magazine, have the top of her dining room wall painted with the Alice in Wonderland quote about believing six impossible things before breakfast. But she aborted that idea as a product of grief and anger, getting back at John for dying on her.

But here she was. He had spent the night, they did it last night and they did it this morning again. Did it for fun, for the hell of it. She offered to make the coffee while he showered. He would like to shave. There is a new disposable razor, but it's pink. He smiled, it'll do. No one could question his manhood this morning, she teased.

And now she was setting the table across, the short way. Impossible things? Was that six? She would call the painters tomorrow.


.

How to design a sweater or maybe steal a design or whatever. It's what I do sometimes.

So last night (and this morning 'cause it got late) I watched "Stranger than Fiction" which is a good movie and BG recommended. Pop culture trivia Will Ferrell and Blue Gal have the same birthday, which we share with BG's mom as well.

So at the end of this movie, Emma Thompson (goddess), who has pretty much looked like shit for the whole movie because she is a depressed blocked creative, pulls herself together and puts on a really nice sweater.



Yeah I think it probably is Eileen Fisher and you know I've dissed that line before but this one inspired me to get a little knit design mojo going. I'll probably never knit it but it's fun to play.

Hokay so here's my little doodle I did my own self to think about how the sweater is constructed. Like most sweaters it's a series of modified rectangles. One big rectangle gets wrapped around the shoulders. Another smaller rectangle goes around the lower back under the arms and connects to the lower outside of the "shawl" portion. Then the sleeves are attached (I would just knit down from the hole created to save some sewing and give me lots of control over sleeve length.)

The downside of a sweater like this is the yarn and how stretchy it has to be to make the sweater work and how easily it can stretch out of shape all together. Let the knitter beware.

The yarn is clearly some sort of rayon tape or ribbon. I might want to use a yarn with just a touch of color or texture, but nothing too distracting from the ribbing and nothing that will take away from the comfort level of pulling this on.

The stitch may be k3 p3 though I think it may even be wider than that. 2nd Nature Design uses that rib very effectively in the Three Season Poncho (scroll down on this page for the blue one, it's really nice.)