So I'm in church today and I started noticing the knitted items around me. A woman in front of me was wearing a 3/4 sleeve little cardie, machine made, and there were a few sleeveless shells and such, and a crocheted cardigan (the a/c was on Meat Locker again) and I started thinking how Bonne Marie has become my favorite designer, because her designs are hip yet classic, fun to make, and actually look like things people buy in stores, but much nicer. The little cardie in front of me was probably not cheap (the woman was very Expensively Blonde in what looked like a Talbots kinda sleeveless sheath, daddy was wearing Polo and her kids were head-to-toe in Hilfiger) but compared to the Sitcom Chic, her little cardie looked very bland and not worth noticing - I noticed only because I am a knitter - it had no finishing details, no nothing. Bonne Marie is a knitting goddess - her Sitcom Chic has just enough detail and flair to make it special, but not Too Much.

I have completed one Sitcom Chic and have another on needles, halfway up the first sleeve, and my mind is already racing to a twinset. I really like Cotton-ease - I know people tend to make that "wine from a BOX?" face at the mention of Lion Brand yarns, but as far as I am concerned, Cotton-ease is right up there with way more expensive cotton blends. It's a damn nice yarn. I dare those who have sneered to buy a skein, knit a swatch, and open their minds - the hand is nice, the stitch definition is great, and you can throw the sucker in the washer and dryer - whoops, shouldn't have said that, that's one of those box-wine-yarn kinda things, isn't it? Personally, I love low-maintenance, I have better things to do than Hand Wash Dry Flat, but to each his/her own. My only gripe with Cotton-ease was the color selection, it's very kid-oriented and at first that was a drawback, but then I started thinking how a Pistachio or Banana Cream or Mint or Candy Blue Cotton-ease Sitcom Chic-Chickami twinset would look really great and not kidlike at all with a very classic black skirt, and would look appropriate in a nice restaurant or a courtroom (if I kept the SCC on, which is certainly never an issue in icy courthouse a/c) around these parts, and now I'm thinking there will be a THIRD SCC after the red one, and a Chikami to match. Some patterns are a "made one, that was enough" thing - the Market Bag is starting to feel that way to me - others are "that was so fun and easy and the results were so cute, I need more!" types. And we have lots more warm weather ahead here, though the rest of the country is celebrating Labor Day Weekend and the end of summer, here in Florida we have many weeks of heat and humidity to go, and then the break from the heat isn't that long before It's Baaaack.

All of these knitting fantasies just help to motivate me to work out - a Chickami deserves really toned arms, right? I'm toying with the idea of rejoining the gym, but I'll wait 30 days and see how the finances and schedule shake out. I really loved weight training, and that's one thing I can't do too much on my own, at home. I do the small freeweights, but I miss the real thing. I'll think about this for another month and see if I still feel this way.

This post was interrupted by a demand from the Bossy One - he needed a walkie, and felt the lake was a fine destination. We walked to the lake - didn't go around it, because the sun is still high in the sky and it's still really freaking hot out there. So we detoured around one of the shady paths that run behind the houses in my neighborhood, to cut back to our own familiar turf. The Bossy One is comical on a new, shady and kudzu-overgrown path - he's not quite so macho and in charge of his world in unfamiliar territory, especially one that is undoubtedly chock-full of possum and raccoon and other animal scents. Suddenly, he's Mommy's Boy and does not pull on the leash or try to charge off into the underbrush, as he tends to do on his own turf, and he's very happy to get back to familiar territory, and if he wanted to be carried back there, well, it's just because it's hot and he's tired, it's not like he was actually nervous or anything. But it was nice to feel the subtle (very subtle) change in the air - the steambath humidity is just a trifle lower, the breeze doesn't feel quite as much like an exhaust fan from hell, could it be that...someday we will have cooler temps again? So now I'm thinking that I need to drag his lazy little ass (and my lazier and much bigger ass) around the lake in the mornings this week - I am off all week, and though I'll be out of town and Moving Girl at the end of the week, there are still several good walking days ahead. We will Walkie.