clothes without knitting

The knitting pace continues to be very, very slow. I blame the books and the Sudoku. I had held out so long on doing Sudoku, since I knew I’d get sucked into doing lots of them. I used to do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, starting at breakfast (and continuing as needed, especially for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday ones). Grad school (and blogs) weaned me away from crosswords, to the point where I only do a few every month, and only Thursday-Sunday ones. I did not need another addiction. Really. It’s eating into my fiber time! And making me late for work! Anyway, the combination of Sudoku (especially those dashboard widgets) with the bunch of new books I bought last weekend kind of squooshed out most of the knitting time this past week. The attention-starved kitten hasn’t really been helping with the knitting productivity, either. (Now that I think of it, the four evenings that included social events that weren’t primarily knitting can’t have helped at all. But I’m still blaming the books and the sudoku.)

Fortunately for me, there are ways of acquiring new clothing without knitting it. (*gasp*)

I took advantage of two of those ways yesterday afternoon. Ella hosted a Naked Lady Party (aka clothing swap), from which I acquired four skirts (thanks, Ella!):

And we also took a field trip to a store called Mia Lou. I had been meaning to go there for months, but it’s just a few blocks past my usual circuit, and it’s only open on weekends. Why’d I want to go? It’s got lots of local crafts, including some beautiful jewelry and stained glass and knitted goods and and… (Some of them are also available at The Black Cat, which has been on my radar for a while. Unfortunately, the things I wanted to show you are not on the Black Cat website.) But Mia Lou also has West Philly shirts of various designs. Jill got a West Philly All-Stars hoodie, and I bought this:

The screenprint design is photoshopped from the sign at the West Philadelphia High School. I like it. And I think I may eventually have to get one of the West Philly/Baltimore Avenue 34 shirts. (The 34 trolley runs down Baltimore Ave, in West Philly.)

And, just maybe, I’ll eventually finish knitting my Jaywalkers.