No jokes about my name

Saturday night, El Fuego and I watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Great movie - the story was very interesting, the cast was fantastic, the imagery was brilliant. I don't want to say too much, I'm always afraid of ruining a good flick for someone who hasn't seen it, but I really enjoyed it, and I love how it ended.

And I was driven to distraction by the armwarmers Clementine (Kate Winslet) wore at the beginning. I was not totally uninterested in the hat Joel (Jim Carrey) wore, a good-looking and utilitarian 2x2 ribbed watchcap, but it was Clementine's armwarmers that grabbed my knitterly instincts by the hair. They're so slouchy! So very long, and slouchy, and she wore them all bunched up on the sleeves of her sweatshirt (which was orange - don't think I didn't take note of the orange sweatshirt).

Sunday evening, I grabbed a couple of balls of KnitPicks Shine Sport from the stash and started knitting. After a couple of false starts, I finally felt like I had the right idea: just a long, long tube of stocking stitch. My brain kept wanting to take measurements, and count rounds, and I kept talking myself out of it. Slouchy. Sloppy, almost. Don't try to do anything exact. What would Clementine knit? I put a big old 10-stitch buttonhole in for the thumb at a spot that looked about right, switched to a larger needle size after about 6 inches, tossed in a tiny bit of garter stitch at the end just for fun, and bound off with a much larger needle size, so the bind-off wouldn't be too tight. Tried it on...perfect! Exactly what I was after: Clementine's armwarmer! And then I made another one.

I've got one up on Clementine, though: mine aren't even the same color. Booyah!


(But Clementine's got one up on me: she looks like Kate Winslet.)