"This is great!" she said between forkfuls of pad thai. "You picked the one Thai restaurant next to a Books-A-Million. I was so craving a mocha…and now I can take care of my sushi cravings and my mocha cravings!"

After we all finished our lunches, Rick and I pronounced ourselves the chile fans at the table, agreeing that the three-pepper heat level of our noodles wasn't much more than a nice tongue-tickling heat.

Jessica stared. "Are you insane? Two peppers nearly blew my head off!"A few minutes later, Jeff, Rick, and Stephen excused themselves to go back to work. The Jessicas (Sheffield and Drewrey) and I walked a few doors down to the Books-A-Million. They each bought a mocha; I declined ("I'd like coffee better if it didn't actually contain any coffee").

They absorbed their coffees in the warmth of the bookstore, waiting in hope that, outside, the chill rain would stop before our coffees were done.

"I've been meaning to ask," I said to Jessica S., "I know the hat I made you fit. I've got a lot of yarn left over; do you want me to do you up a scarf to match the hat?"

"Not really. I've got a ton of scarves; can't really see the use for another one. Now what would be cool, though: a pair of mittens."

She flapped her hands around, fingers together and stiff, as if they were constrained by a pair of mittens.

"You know, this really should be" (flap, flap) "the international sign for mittens."

I compared our hands. Hers were the same width as mine, but slightly longer than mine. This might not be so difficult to do after all.

* * * * *

Noah was online when I signed on for a little while this afternoon. He was greatly amused by my search for mitten patterns ("How does one search for mitten patterns online?" was the question, I believe). I printed off one that looked promising, and went on with life.

* * * * *

By the time Jeff got home, I was halfway through experimenting with the pattern and more than halfway convinced that said pattern was worth exactly what I'd paid for it. After twice ripping out stitches, I finally hit on a number and pattern of stitches that looked promising.

In knitting, tension is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite; tension refers to the constant slight pull a knitter's hands exert on the yarn as it is worked. Less tension leads to loose knitting; more tension (up to a point) generally leads to a tighter finished fabric.

Every knitter's tension is different; thus the formal incantation of "Check your gauge!" included at the beginning of every pattern.

This free mitten pattern, however, appears to expect a tension and a resulting gauge that is impossible to achieve with human hands.

Thus, I'm blowing off the pattern and going out on my own.

We'll see how it goes.