Snow ho, snow ho, a snow pirate’s life for me. That makes absolutely zero sense. I wish it were the beer talking, but it’s not. I’m just weird. Thankfully CT is avoiding the blizzardish punch that DC and NYC are getting hammered with right now. It’s been snowing for the past 5 hours, but nothing apocalyptic. JUST ENOUGH for me to sit on the couch and eat grilled cheese and drink a beer (or 2) and catch up on emails!

Emails done. Grilled cheese housed. Now, on to this:

Here’s the latest installment from my most recent trip to actually try some of the latest threads on.

Speed Crop ($88) in heathered black

THE FIT: If you own a pair of luxtreme (not fullux, just plain old luxtreme) Inspire Crops, then these feel almost the exact same. Having not been a huge fan of the look of the Speed Tight in the past, I didn’t know what to expect. Now that I’ve tried these on, I may actually want a pair. While I always thought the arched seam on the rear end tended to flatten how your butt looks – the side view is actually pretty kick….. ass. Pun intended.

They go up a bit higher than your average pair of Wunder Unders, and have a drawstring that I didn’t bother snapping a photo of. Riddle me this, readers: if your spandex pants are so loose that you need a drawstring to hold them up, doesn’t that mean one of two things: 1) your pants are too big and you should size down or 2) ok so maybe your rear end really *is* abnormally larger than your waist measurement leads the fashion world to believe? #deepthoughtswithkaty

LENGTH: These are on the longer side of a crop, which I like. Not quite as long as the High Times (which officially qualify as a pant), but they have more length to them than the average pair of Wunder Under Crops (despite the fact that the Hi-Rise WUCs seem to be more generous in the length dept this year). They may be almost ankle-length on some of the shorties out there, but they worked for my being 5’9″.

POCKET SITUATION: In addition to the usual waistband coin pocket, these have both a zipper pocket in the back and a larger phone pocket on the side of the leg. Too busy taking photos with my phone, I clearly didn’t get a chance to stick my phone in and test how well it would stay put.

What seems like a plausible excuse only holds water until someone who knows me points out that I carry 2 phones. Yeah yeah yeah, I forgot to jam one in the side pocket and document with the other. Lesson learned. Either way, my entire hand fits. My entire hand is bigger than an iPhone 6. There’s your scale.

DETAILS: I may end up having to eat my previous words on not being much of a fan of the Speed Tight. The contrasting seams that I wasn’t so much a fan of on the models, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the reflection in the mirror. Again, I was having a skinny day last week, so if I tried them on today – opinion could differ.

Like the Inspire Crop IIs and the Pace Rival Crops, some models of the Speed Crops also feature a nice mesh panel on the back of the knees.

THE VERDICT: I’ve learned from the past that impulse buys don’t always pay off. Sometimes you end up falling in immediate love and wear something to pieces (oh hi, Baller Hat) and others you wear once and question what the hell you were thinking when you walked up to register, because now you wore it once and don’t plan on wearing again. Here’s looking at you, black Mesh With Me Tank. 🙁

Where am I going with this anecdote? I am trying much harder lately not to buy things I had no plans on walking out of the store with before walking in. If I like something but am not sure of the price tag, I now find myself putting it back on the rack or saving it on my favorites list. Here’s why:

• With Seawheeze and wanting to go to the 2016 CrossFit Games, this summer isn’t going to be cheap.
• If I forget about something before leaving the store, then clearly I wasn’t just that into that piece anyways.
• If you have to stop and ask yourself if you really want something or not, you don’t really want it all that bad. If you REALLY wanted it, you’d know it.

LIFE ADVICE: This “if you have to think twice about it then it’s best to leave it behind” principle also applies to boys. If you have to question it, he’s not the gentleman for you.

GET TO THE POINT, KATY. I left these behind at first, because $88 isn’t cheap and they were not what I planned to buy that day. However, I haven’t stopped thinking about these crops all week. They left a bit of a lasting impression. Odds are half decent that I’ll be burning a holiday gift card to snag myself a pair in the near future. 🙂