Cardigans. What are they?
Some people say a cardigan is a sweater that buttons up the front. Is it, though? One supposes it is. I have given this matter considerable thought—my moustache tingled no fewer than three times while I sat in my converted barn, contemplating the subject—and I have concluded that cardigans are, in fact, garments. They have sleeves. They have buttons. Sometimes they do not have buttons and instead have a zipper, which raises the philosophical question: is it still a cardigan? Who can say. Not I. I am merely a journalist of modest means, living alone in an apple barn with two Siamese cats and the entire Klingenschoen fortune, which, I assure you, is barely adequate for the heating bill.
Speaking of the cats, Koko pushed a book off the shelf this morning. It was a volume on Scottish textiles. Coincidence? I think not. Koko’s literary selections are never accidental. He is, without exaggeration, the finest editorial mind in Moose County. Yum Yum, meanwhile, stole a button from my cardigan and batted it under the refrigerator. This is the kind of petty theft one comes to expect in Pickax, a town where the murder rate per capita rivals that of a modest war zone, though no one seems terribly bothered.
Are cardigans warm? Yes. Are they fashionable? That depends on whom you ask. Do I personally own several, purchased at full price despite the fact that the K Fund could reasonably classify knitwear as a cultural preservation expense? I decline to answer on the grounds that my accountant has advised discretion. He has also advised me not to discuss the barn’s reclassification as a textile museum, which entitles it to certain property tax exemptions that are entirely above board.
Someone tried to look through my window last Tuesday. Were they after the cats? The cardigan? My birdseed reserves, which have been suspiciously depleted? My moustache bristled with alarm. In this town, a man cannot even button his sweater without inviting criminal attention. Last month alone there were two arsons and a suspicious death at the knitting shop, which everyone has already forgotten about.
But I digress. The point is that cardigans exist and we wear them. Why do we wear them? Because it is cold. Why is it cold? Because we live four hundred miles north of everywhere. Is that relevant? Probably not. But I have a word count to meet, and the citizens of Moose County deserve every word I deign to write.
Cardigans.
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