J'ai pas pu resister...*

Normally, when I think of buying something, and decide not to, I forget about it. I often go by the 24-hour rule: wait 24 hours and see if you still want it. Usually, I don't.

Not so with the "Thistle" colored Elann alpaca...I kept going back and looking at it, again and again, and thinking of that cabled hoodie, and thinking of how I don't have anything that's *quite* that color in my wardrobe (but have a number of things that would look good with that color).

I even tried to consider repurposing some old, old burgundy Muskoka that I bought (before I even moved down here! So it's, like, seven years old!) for a Wonderful Wallaby, into the hoodie, and it just didn't work in my mind.

So I decided: well, I've been a good girl. I can afford it - I haven't used the Yarn Budget for a couple months. It's been a kind of challenging summer. I will enjoy making the hoodie and will enjoy wearing it (if we ever get cold weather again). So the yarn's now on it's way to me. And I don't feel buyer's remorse - I feel happy and expectant and am looking forward to opening up the box and feeling of the yarn and smelling the yarn (Yes, I smell the yarn I get, at least the natural-fiber ones. Hey, I don't have a cat or dog to "snorgle," okay?). And casting on, and cabling away. And the color. It's like fog, but with some purple mixed in. Should look good with jeans.

So I decided to no longer resist and to give in to the siren call of The Alpaca.

(*That was one of my favorite songs, for a short while, when I was an undergrad. There's a whole story attached to it...I took my [one and only] college level French class [which I hated; I had a mean snarky TA who was nothing like the delightful Dr. Pryce I had in high school].

We had to listen to these tapes for this class in the Language Lab. The tapes were boring as all get out - Jean and Mirelle talking about going to the tabac and such - but they started out with this wonderful nostalgic song, a man singing about "Douce France.." It was only a fragment of the song and I became obsessed with finding a recording of the rest.

By amazing good fortune, at the Tower Records that had recently opened on South University, I found a compilation of French "chanson" that had the desired song on it (Charles Trenet, and that led to a fascination with his music - I think I have almost every song he recorded either on disk or tape, even his few fumbling (and disappointing) attempts to sing in English.). But it also had "Bal dans ma Rue" on it. And you know, when you're a science-major, closet-drama-queen undergraduate, a little Edith Piaf once in a while is a wonderful thing. I particularly loved this part of the song, from which the title of this post is taken:

"J'étais si fière de lui, j'ai pas pu résister
A ma meilleure amie, un jour j' l'ai présenté.
Ils se sont plus immédiatement
Ils se sont mariés ce matin.
Ils formaient un couple épatant
Et moi, j'étais témoin..."

Basically: The singer was so proud of her boyfriend that she couldn't resist introducing him to her best friend. Bad move, because they (the friend and the boyfriend) fell in love...and they just got married the morning of the day the song takes place...and the singer, she was the witness at their wedding.

Oh! That just gets me Right There. Not that I was ever IN that exact situation but when I was 19 I could totally feel what that would have been like, and the way Edith spun out the words, "Et moi, j'étais témoin..." on the recording...

Granted, the reference has nothing to do with buying yarn but it's just something that pops into my mind when someone says they couldn't resist something.

My brain is wired funny that way.)