The Poncho

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I was just mentioning as an aside in an email this morning the proliferation of the Poncho.

Let me back up. In the email to me, the person signed off as "The Urban Sombrero", which was funny, because I was just thinking about the urban sombrero the other day.

For those of you who are lost... it refers to an episode of Seinfeld where J. Peterman runs off to Burma (you most likely know it as Myanmar) and leaves Elaine to run the catalog, where she puts a sombrero on the cover as the new big item for businessmen... anyway...

So I was thinking the other day about the urban sombrero when I was walking out of Byerly's and a woman past me wearing the most ugly mexican styled blanket I had ever seen... then I realized it was a poncho, and that Poncho Style had finally made it to the midwest.

What is with the poncho? It's a "poncho" people... it's a piece of cloth with a hole for the head. That's where fashion is at these days? Was it the plan to create something fashionable that the Amish could wear? (no buttons or zippers, you see)

I typed "poncho ridiculous" into google and found this:

http://manoloshoes.blogspot.com/2005/03/manolo-no-poncho-pledge.html At least someone who appears to be some sort of fashionista agrees with me, but even with the word "ridiculous" in my search, I still found plenty of serious poncho sites.

Oh, one more anti-poncho link:

http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2108192 Love the pic of Susan Dey... c'mon get haaaapyyyyyy! Now the serious sites:

http://www.lionbrand.com/content-ponchoIndex.html

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter02/PATTacapella.html

http://knitting.about.com/library/blponchopic.htm

Oddly enough many of them are about knitting your own. I'm guessing if you are a person who knits, it isn't too hard to knit a big square with a hole in the middle... maybe that's why it's so popular.

I'm baffled... just baffled...

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