We caught up with Mr. G’s parents last Sunday to celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary. Mr. G needed to fix his mom’s computer (this is true pretty much every time we visit them), so he and his father headed upstairs for some tinkering and man chat. But Alice and I made straight for the basement where she’s got her quilting supplies and sewing station. Turns out visiting friends who sew is just like visiting friends who knit: the best fun is to root through the stash together. It’s much the way we used to play as children, don’t you think? Pull out all the available playthings, maybe even mix together your collections and do a little swapping, because everything old is new again under the friendly eye of a kindred spirit? Anyway, Alice sent me home with her extra cutting mat and three Kaffe Fassett quilting books on loan from her personal library.

Rewind to Saturday. Mr. G was at a Ruby on Rails conference (if that doesn’t mean anything to you, join the club where we just try to picture a massive geek-fest with lots of men and just a dash of women pushing their glasses up their noses and talking gobbledygook that you and I wouldn’t understand anyway). I was feeling a little mopey that I’d hardly had a glimpse of my husband in a week and that he was opting to stay out until 3am playing geek-fest games like Werewolf (which turns out to be exactly the same as Mafia, a favorite pastime among my middle schoolers) instead of coming home to bed. I decided it would lift my spirits to drive down to Mill End and frolic in their massive fabric selection with an eye to collecting some tidbits for a new quilt idea I’d had. But when I stood before the big wall of fat quarters, I found another force was guiding my eyes and my grabby fingers. Instead of industrial blues, greys, dirty whites, russets, and maroons, I was snatching up patterned greens and deep floral reds and buttery creams and Japanese botanicals. And once I had them all out together, I couldn’t put them back. I fell for a cream-ochre-and-green calico that happened to coordinate perfectly as a backing, and I had the makings of a quilt I hadn’t even envisioned yet.

So it must have been fate, because when I opened Kaffe Fassett’s Museum Quilts (all inspired by pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, probably my favorite place I’ve never been) the next evening, I lit immediately on the daftly-but-winsomely named Leafy Snowball quilt. And there was my project.

Turns out Kaffe is my man for the times when I just can’t resist the prints. My taste is more temperate than his sultry hothouse love of overblown, saturated florals and geometrics. But whenever a quilt recipe suggests a palette of solids enlivened with a few quiet prints and I can’t keep my hands off the wilder calicoes and toiles de Jouy, I know Kaffe will beckon. He’s beckoning already, because I’ve also fallen for these (links where I could find examples on Flickr, but you should really just go to the library and page through these sumptuous books):

From Museum Quilts:

Bricks Patchworks
Clamshell Quilt (or more realistically, the Square Clamshell Quilt)
Jockey’s Cap Baby Quilt

From Passionate Patchwork:

Squares Window Blind
Shirt-stripe Boxes (probably my favorite of all – and here’s Lauren’s beautiful version)
Baby’s Corrugated Quilt

But before I get too far ahead of myself, there’s my simple Lap Quilt to finish. I’ve done half my in-the-ditch stitching, so the quilting itself will soon be finished, but the binding I’ll do at least partially by hand, so it will be a little longer before I can claim victory. I’m thinking this quilt will be for the new baby next door, but she’s not arriving until the fall. This gives me time to make something for her big sister, too, which I think is important: when you’re not yet three, it’s hard to understand why the baby gets all the presents and attention. Plus it’s an excuse to keep on sewing!

Early May was scorching hot. The vegetable starts prostrated themselves in their pots; the cucumbers gave up the ghost entirely. Mosquitoes hatched and reveled at the feast of tender Portlanders exposing bare skin for the first time all season. When the thermometer soared past 90, I rushed to finish the sundress I was sewing: there’s no more comfortable hot-weather garb than short, full, cotton skirts, mosquitoes be damned. I inserted an invisible zipper. Signy and I made our first buttonhole together so I could secure the shoulder “tie” that wasn’t long enough to do its job. I wore this sucker to school on the hottest day of all. I even dragged Mr. G out the front door one sticky evening to take pictures:

Today I shiver just to look at these photographs. Now that June has arrived and we’re on the cusp of summer, it’s 52 degrees, rain is spitting at the windows, and the trees are flailing helplessly in a dour wind. I can only trust that one day it will be warm enough to drag this dress out of the closet again. Want the specs in case you live in the other Portland, or somewhere else that’s weathering 90-degree temperatures today?

Vogue pattern V8380

Alexander Henry fabric

This is my second sewn garment (the first — last summer — was a simple skirt), and by far the most technical project I’ve taken on. The skirt, cut to the pattern, was so blousy that I looked like a little child all stretched: Alice after the EAT ME cake. I ripped it off the bodice, lopped a good six inches of width off one side, and stitched it up again. It’s still more of an empire waist than I generally think flatters my figure, but it’s a lot better. And undeniably suitable for hot weather when you want the breeze to circulate as far up as possible. I expect to wear it often once the real summer returns (it has to, right?).

Tour de France Countdown

My favorite annual sporting event begins in Brest, France in exactly one month! I think there’s still space in the KAL if you hurry and sign up right now. I’ll be competing in the Green Jersey category, trying to complete my first contribution to Popknits by the time the cyclists reach Paris. I’m also Chef d’Equipe for Team Rabobank this year! Kate of Knights Don’t Knight is going to assist me and take the reins while I’m at Knitting Camp. I can’t wait to see who’s on our squad and what they’re knitting.

Meg tagged me nearly two weeks ago, and since she asked (and what wouldn’t I do for somebody with a Corgi puppy and a camera?), and since there’s nothing interesting to see in the fourteen inches of blue stockinet plus a couple of lace rows that currently comprise my Indigo Ripples skirt, I give you a meme. But first, a digression: haven’t you always wanted to know exactly where this weird word ‘meme’ comes from and how to pronounce it? I have. And having been schooled to compulsive dictionary use as soon as I could read, I looked it up. You say ‘meem,’ and it’s a noun used in biology to refer to an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. It was coined in the 1970s from the Greek mimema, ‘that which is imitated,‘ on the pattern of gene.

1) What was I doing ten years ago?

Ten years ago I had finished my first year of college, and I was on my way to visit my friend Elisenda, who’d been an exchange student at my high school, in her hometown of Barcelona. I was shortly to become lost overnight because Elisenda and I had miscommunicated about the dates, leaving me stranded at the airport without her address or phone number or any skills in Spanish or Catalan. Fortunately a nice man called his English-speaking wife and had her explain to me how to catch a bus into the area of town where there are youth hostels, and how to buy a phone card in a tobacco shop so I could call home and panic my poor mother, who did have Elisenda’s phone number. I spent a sniffly night feeling very alone in my tiny hostel room, but all was well the next day. Barcelona and the surrounding countryside are beautiful and I intend to return one day.

2) What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today:

* go to the park to frisbee the dog into all-too-temporary exhaustion

* concoct some sort of interesting Indian-inflected dinner involving cauliflower, chick peas, tomato paste, garlic, and ginger

* rip out a few rows of my secret project for Pop Knits

* hand-quilt a few more flower shapes on my Bend-the-Rules Lap Quilt

* read another chapter of Elizabeth Enright’s wonderful children’s novel The Sea Is All Around, which I’m discovering far too late, and which really ought to be in print, if anyone at FSG is reading this

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Goldfish crackers, apple slices (the crisper and tarter the better), Trader Joe’s lime leaf and chili pepper peanuts, mochi wrapped in seaweed and dipped in tamari, hummus with vegetables, ants-on-a-log, chocolate digestive biscuits, toasted hazelnuts, peppercorn or herbes de provence Oregon Sublimity from Brian the Cheese Guy at the farmers’ market. Can you tell it’s getting to be tea time?

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Pay off the mortgage, build a mudroom (and a new deck before someone falls through), help out friends and family members whose dreams are out of reach, travel with my husband and family, endow scholarships everywhere I’ve studied or taught, fund projects to help make life in my communities more sustainable – environmentally and socially, and generally try to rise to the responsibilities that come with great privilege. If I happened to acquire a few more pairs of cute shoes along the way, would that make me shallow?

5) Places I have lived:

San Juan Island, WA; Portland, OR; Brunswick, ME; Balkot, Nepal; Deep Creek, Eleuthera, The Bahamas; New York, NY… and back to Portland

6) Jobs I have had:

veterinary assistant, construction crew member, admissions interviewer and overnight hosting coordinator, middle school teacher, assistant editor of children’s books, school office assistant, publications editor

Memes are like fast food for your blog. Drive on through if you feel the urge. Decide later whether you feel guilty about taking the quick and cheap route for content. Me? Nah. Once in a while won’t hurt. But I’ll have something more exciting and homemade for you next time.