A blog is like a dog,

in some ways.  For instance, when going on vacation, one must decide beforehand how to care for the blog, realizing that it must be fed regularly.  And since I don't have a laptop, and my compact digital camera is gone for repairs, that meant deciding ahead of time what to blog about, and emailing myself an image to insert, using the husband's ThinkPad.  Which means a certain loss of spontaneity...but I'll be home soon.  (How sick is that, longing to be home for easy blogging while sunning myself on South Beach?)

Anyway.  I recently found this document between the pages of my beloved Treasury of Art Nouveau Design & Ornament.  It was created when I was in college--which, incidentally, was about when Eunny was born--yes, twenty-something years ago.  Kinda young for a person, kinda old for a throwaway piece of paper.  And I had to laugh, looking at it; it's sketches for the Boyfriend Hat and the Paisley Vest, two of my first original designs.  (Clearly I had no concerns at that time about too-long floats.)  The Paisley Vest was oversized, done in grey wool with cream paisleys in an allover pattern, and beloved among my post-college friends--so much so that I have no idea where it is now, it having embarked on a lending cycle from which it never returned.  I do remember that the V-neck pulled the paisley just below it out of shape, something which would be intolerable to me now.

As for the Boyfriend Hat, picture a common stocking cap, and then lengthen it to about five feet--long enough to wrap around the neck--and then picture various colored stripes, each embellished with either a Fair Isle-style pattern, or a more personalized jacquard motif:  snowflakes (to commemorate our ski trips together); easter eggs (the first time I went home with him to meet the folks); tiger stripes (a nod to the alma mater); Plato's Retreat (no comment); waves (our trip to Cape Hatteras); and more that I can't, or won't, remember. 

Unique?  Yes.  Hideous?  Perhaps.  I haven't seen it in many, many years, and although I remember it as being colorful and silly, not gag-inducing, we all know how memory can deceive us.  Finding these sketches did pique my curiosity:  just how bad was it?  So if you should spot it on a ski slope, or buried in your cousin's husband's closet, or bobbing down the aisle at the 7-11, please--let me know.