Love Is All You Knit

Having lived most of my life in Texas, I’ve been a little weary of my first winter up north. Last week we got a small tidbit of fall-like weather, with the nighttime temps dropping into the 40-degree range.  I thoroughly enjoyed feeling the crisp air on my face while walking to the train station in the mornings, though I could also feel the crisp air whipping through my thin slacks. In the back of my mind I started to worry about how my walk to work would feel when it got really cold.  The first time I visited New York it was in early February and it was bone chillingly cold, no matter how many layers I had on underneath my coat.  During that trip, all the “New Yorkers” I saw seemed to be nice and toasty underneath their quilted down jackets and it stuck out in my mind that that is the kind of coat you need when you live up north.

Then yesterday I was out shopping when two guys pushed a rack full of coats onto the corner in front of the store I was exiting and started shouting, “Get your coats, Burberry, London Fog, Kenneth Cole, right here, ten dollars each, won’t last long!” and women started swarming the rack.  I had been looking for a coat all day, eyeballing a long black down-filled one at Urban Outfitters for later purchase.  (Once I had saved up the $218 it was gonna set me back.)  I squeezed in with all the other crazed women and found to my surprise, a coat almost exactly like what I had been looking for.  It was a size small, from Express and I grabbed it and handed the guy a ten dollar bill.  He balled my new coat up and put it in a black plastic bag and shouted to the surrounding crowd, “Another one sold, get your coats right here, Burberry, London Fog, Kenneth Cole!”

When I got home, I tried it on for the first time.  It is a little bigger than I was expecting, especially for a size small.  The bottom two feet of the coat can be zipped off for a shorter coat if desired.  It is very warm and when I wear it, I feel like George Costanza in that episode of Seinfeld where he has on this humongous coat and tells everyone, “Its Gore-Tex!”  Later in the episode, he ends up knocking over an entire rack of wine at a shop because his coat is so huge and he can’t get around in the store.  I dunno.  I kind of think I might have overdone it with this coat.  You tell me:

Ghastly Gargantuan or Terrifically Toasty?

I might feel differently when its 18 degrees outside and everyone around me is shivering while I’m cozy in my down comforter coat.

And speaking of being prepared for colder weather, Joey’s feet should be nice and warm as soon as I finish his second Stripy Sock:

Hello, I am a cute stripy sock. Please ignore my obvious laddering.

The errant line of blue is where I’ll be inserting the afterthought heel.  Maybe I’ll try to take pictures of it- its really a neat way to do sock heels.