Black Friday

A,
I tried black Friday shopping for the first time today. I took about two steps into Walmart and then turned around and left. I forgot I don't like holiday shoppers.

The mall, however, was empty. I was surprised by this, but after some consideration, I surmised that our town's entire population must be at Walmart today, leaving the mall essentially free from shoppers. I bought a pair of shoes.

I don't usually shop at our mall, because it has very few stores in it that you would recognize, and mostly it's full of poor-fitting teenage fashions. The last time I was at the mall, I was trying to find a pair of jeans. I think I stopped at every single store that sold jeans (we have a small mall), and ended up leaving empty-handed. It occurred to me later that every pair of jeans I tried on were not really jeans. They were stretch jeans, which in my opinion are not really jeans at all.

One store I stopped at today was full of wild sweaters with fascinating shapes and cables. I spent some time looking at them and wondering about their construction. What interested me about this store is that it was full of synthetic, plastick-y fabrics (which, whatever. That's fine, I have worn plenty of acrylic sweaters). But the weird thing was that it was also selling one lone cashmere sweater along with everything else.

Is this a testament to the recent availability of cheap cashmere? Or maybe. Maybe the average person wouldn't recognize that most other materials in this store were cheaply-produced. Mostly, I just like the juxtaposition of cashmere surrounded by synthetic.

PS. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and are enjoying the leftovers.

PPS. The BEST place to shop on the day after Thanksgiving is the grocery store. No crowds. Best time to shop ever.

PPPS. I had to rip back my sweater already. Waaay too many increases in the pattern. If I had continued, it would have swallowed me whole.

K

must . . . finish run . . . so I can knit

A,
Everything still hurts. Even my toes. Which, apparently, is a motivation to keep knitting.

I think I told you that James and I are training to run a half marathon this December. I'm a newbie at running, and I'm sure I'm still slow, but we're working on adding the miles rather than the speed. Generally I've been running in the mornings and James has been running in the evenings, but this weekend, I decided to wait for him to come home from work for us to run together. Which meant that we were running nine miles at noon, with the sun at its zenith. Now, we may be having the same lows as Iowa right now, but our highs are in the 70s. Which isn't even that hot! So I don't know what happened, but the sun was beating on us, we didn't have water, and our run--which should have lasted 90 minutes--took over two hours.

We stopped at three places to try to find water. The first place we stopped was a church, and although I couldn't find a drinking fountain inside, we let Dutch drink out of the decorative fountain at the foot of three metal crosses. I finally found water for us by sneaking into a hotel and looting cups from their breakfast nook.

Finally, with water in us, we completed the run. I swear to you today, I will only run when it is cooler than forty degrees outside. Well, maybe some exceptions to that, but never never again when the sun is so high in the sky.

I thought maybe I would get some work done this weekend, but I was so sore that I didn't want to move ever again. So I forgot about research and started a sweater instead. In my opinion, knitting is almost always a better use of time than school work. So that's what I did.




PS. I finished the shrug with your yarn. Actually, I think I told you that, didn't I? Anyway, I'll post a picture once I have James around during the day time.

PPS. It was good seeing you. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

K