In search of...
Wanted: cashmere cardigan. WIth buttons. Preferably V-neck. Wine colored. (either Merlot or Burgundy. Vintage is negotiable.) Will settle for rich scarlet, but would prefer to stay away from just plain red.

OK, so it's spring. With summer around the corner. Hardly time to be buying sweaters. And yet, for some reason, it just occurred to me to look for one. Cashmere sweaters are the one wardrobe luxury in which I indulge. I love them. And I've been searching for the above described sweater for about 3 years now. It seems to be impossible to find.

Now quite often (don't shoot me) I buy men's cashmere sweaters. Why? Because I like the colors better. Men seem to get all the cool, rich colors. Women's sweaters all look like baby blankets. I look horrible in pastels and I don't like them anyway. I don't want a sweater with a color like "eggshell" or "soft robin." I want actual colors. Deep green. Sapphire blue. And, of course, the long-desired wine color. For colors like that I often have to wander over to the men's department and hope they have it in small. (I refuse to believe that sweaters have genders.)

But my dream cardigan is nowhere to be found. I did a lazy web search and found lots of cashmere sweaters, but none in the desired color. And none in my price range. (I just cannot bring myself to pay $250 for a sweater.) I'll go up to, maybe, $150...but that's pushing it. Typically I pay about $99 (on sale, usually at Macy's during the Christmas rush), and I did find some nice sweaters in that range. But while the styles were right, they were disappointingly displayed with non-colors such as "blush" (is that actually a color?) and "sea foam." (Has anyone actually seen green sea foam?)

It's kind of funny how we get desires in our mind, isn't it? You go through life happily satisfied with your lot and then suddenly you think to yourself "you know, I've always wanted a purple thrumdoodle." So you wander down to the mall, or perhaps onto the web, looking for a thrumdoodle in the perfect shade of purple. (Not too grape-y, not too eggplant-y.) But alas, you can only find thrumdoodles in yellow. And the fact that you can't find one makes you want it all the more. So you go from completely satisfied to "I must find a purple thrumdoodle or die!" Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but you get the point.

So what's the point? Well, there isn't one except that it's 4:49 am on a Sunday morning, I can't sleep, and I can't find a purple thrumdoodle. Or even a wine-colored cashmere cardigan.