sleeveless

It was a long, long weekend here in my little 550 square feet. I’ve circled back to panic recently—my August guest, I suppose—and it’s been a tough few weeks without J around to rally my spirits and check my crazies. So I tend to take very, very long walks through the city, the dirty, smelly, sticky August city. When I'm not walking, or nervously noodling with my C.V., I'm trying to wrap up unfinished projects.

On Saturday, I blocked this sweet little number (I'm not sure why the photo is appearing fuzzy):

I’m spoiling the surprise, I suppose, but he won’t know the difference. It knit up in a couple of days and I kept giggling to myself about making a sleeveless sweater vest. A sleeveless sweater vest. It’s just funny in itself, but even more so because I spent years in the 1980’s teasing my mother about never knitting anything with sleeves. During car rides in Michigan, my mom would ride shotgun and knit with big needles and big yarn. Twack. Twack. Twack. She never seemed to ball her skeins and so they always ended up in a tangled mess at my feet in the back. I’d stubbornly root out the knots and feed her cotton mixes through my young fingers, letting the fibers tickle between my pinkie and my ring finger. And it seems that she was always knitting exactly the same thing: two rectangles that she’d seam together on the sides and neck. A sweater vest. I didn’t understand it then (and, to be honest, I came to believe that she actually couldn’t really knit sleeves and then I just sort of felt bad for her, but I’m sure I was quite wrong indeed)

I still don’t totally understand it. But I do get it’s charms, and I really shouldn’t speak because I certainly don the down winter vest and the autumnal fleece vest (that I’ve been wearing since 1992) with a relish. I like that vests keep the important parts toasty and they allow for maximum mobility. I think this little number might just do the trick.