Thank you all so much for your kind words about Gram. It means a lot to me, and I’m sure to my mum, who reads here sometimes!

It’s been a drear few days weather-wise, and we’re all suffering a little cabin fever around here. Mr. G went to Toronto for five days, which means that Lark has been living in the car in the school parking lot and Mingus hasn’t been outdoors in two days, since I haven’t wanted to subject him to a whole day of huddling outside in the downpour by letting him take his morning constitutional before I leave for work. So it was an extra treat to come home yesterday and find these pushed through the mail slot:

Isn’t is marvelous how it’s still so exciting to get presents from the mailman, even if you’ve bought and paid for them? That’s a Schrodinger Original sock cube – just the thing for protecting my socks-in-progress from the cruel world of cat hair they’re born into. I love those little rosy brown sheep! Go check out Cathy’s shop – she has a couple more sheep cubes like mine, plus an adorable Japanese print of matryoshka dolls.

And as you see, I couldn’t resist ordering a copy of Lisa Lloyd’s new book as soon as it pubbed. I haven’t had time to read deeply yet, but I already learned a lot about the properties of different breeds’ wool. I’m sure there’s a wealth of information here to improve my spinning, and the cabled sweaters are truly succulent. I’m not casting on anything right away: the Ivy stole and a secret project for publication with Shibui demand my fidelity as their deadlines loom. But in the mean time, this title is joining the ranks of the books I leaf through late at night just for inspiration.

As soon as I picked up Bend-the-Rules Sewing, I knew I’d have to make the Lap Quilt right away. I had totally forgotten that I’d admired Daphne’s use of this pattern for her scrumptious little nephews. In case I’m not actually the last crafty sort on the planet to take a gander at this splendid little book, I’ll point you to some more beautiful versions others have sewn. I love this one, this Gee’s Bend-inflected version, and this one, which uses the same Amy Butler fabric I have left over from last summer’s skirt — leftovers I’d already decided to build my own quilt around. And most inspirational of all? These fantastic sheets by Moonstitches.
Happily, my burning desire to start sewing again coincided with Bolt’s semi-annual sale. I rooted through discounted fabric like a pig after truffles and came up with this:

I love bending the rules in my knitting, so I’m thoroughly content to follow Amy Karol off the beaten path in sewing, too. I already love her for eschewing fusible interfacing in favor of good old cotton flannel (some of which I also bought so I can sew a charming handbag or a bib on a whim this summer). But I can’t start on my quilt just yet: my sewing table is occupied by my cute little Vogue dress! I did the top this weekend, and thus far I’m very satisfied with my work. We’ll see if I still feel that way once I tackle the invisible zipper and find out whether the thing will fit. I’ve already discovered that a yard of ribbon for the tie at the top is not enough; I love the ribbon I have, though, so I’ll be working on a creative solution to dodge the need for extra length to tie a bow.

***

During the writing of this post I had a phone call from my mother to tell me that my grandmother has passed away. It’s not a sad passing. The word “pass” comes from Latin pace, “peace,” and that’s no euphemism in this case. [oops! This is me reading my dictionary wrong. The OED was trying to tell me that “pass” comes from an Old French word derived from Latin passus, which means ‘pace’ – not that passus itself derived from Latin pace. Now we all know. Thanks for the catch, Mom.] Ruth Phillips Foote lived ninety-seven wonderful years, and she died with the same quiet grace and perfect manners that marked her every action and set the behavioral benchmarks for all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was perfectly organized, she bought our Christmas presents in September and mailed them in November, she wrote stylish and heartfelt notes of gratitude for gifts or simple communications of love and pride at her family’s accomplishments. She was always dressed fit for high tea, she used her silver service daily, and she spoke so beautifully that her laudatory pronunciation of words like “newspaper” were instilled in me as a tot. (Now that I think about it, this last was especially remarkable: she was born and raised on Long Island.) But despite her high polish, she was warm and squeezable and ready to laugh. She adored her family and her many, many friends, and when she outlived them all, she just made kept making new ones. And she did the New York Times crossword every day of the week, including Sundays, and could beat anyone at Scrabble as recently as last year.

We knew she was coming to the end of her time with us. My brother got to make a final visit last week, and my aunt and uncle who live on the east coast have been making regular trips to see her. We knew she wouldn’t make it to his wedding in May, and she didn’t really get to know his fiancée, who is more like her in generosity and boundless affection and social grace than any of us. She treasured every chance of seeing her family all together and would have loved to be there. But it was time for her to go. In a lovely coincidence, one of her nieces stopped in for a last goodbye this afternoon. Having been a nurse, she could read the signs that Gram didn’t have much time. My grandmother wasn’t responsive, but when her niece held her hand and told her it was okay for her to leave and that Taddie, her beloved husband, was waiting for her, she made a little sound at his name. Three hours later she was gone.

It felt frivolous to go on with a chatty post about my new fabric, knowing that my last living grandparent had left us. But Gram was a consummate sewer. At seventeen, she took in sewing to help support her family after her father died, but the necessity of the work didn’t spoil her pleasure in it. She made clothes for herself and for her children. She made my mother’s wedding dress. And she would have been pleased to see me pick up the hobby. I have her little maple sewing box, which still holds her sewing machine needles and cleaning tools and some shockingly dull scissors, well used over the years. I would have sent her a picture of me in my finished dress, and she would have framed it and put it on her bureau with all the other photographs of her dear family. She would have written me an elegant letter of praise in her expansive, decorative hand and reminded me of her opinion that even though my cousin Alison and I were her two summas, what I was really cut out for was modeling, dear. Gram didn’t believe in long goodbyes. She was always ready to look forward, even though her memory for the past was unparalleled. She had a beautiful sense of balance that way.
So that’ll be all for tonight. I’m off to have a little glass of scotch in memory of both my grandmothers.

Mr. Garter has long had a Favorite Sock. It was given to him roughly five years ago, and he pronounced it the finest sock in the land and measured all other socks against it. Meanwhile, he rejected offers of handknit socks from his fiancée-wife. Notice I speak of the übersock in the singular: it lost its mate after only a few wearings, but could never been thrown out because of its peerlessness. It moved with us from one apartment to another in Manhattan and then to Portland. I think it was before that last move, when we were admitting to each other the stupidity of carting around a seven-quart stock pot’s worth of single socks (although they’re useful in packing: you can stuff box corners with them or even dress your drinking glasses in them), that I finally took a careful look at the übersock and realized that I could knit it a mate. It was machine knit, but I had to turn it inside out and find a sewn seam at the toe to tell. It has a nice tubular cast on and short-row heels and toes, but it’s a pretty basic ribbed wool sock. So we kept it.

Fast forward to the fall of 2007. I finally stumbled across a tweed sock yarn that was a decent match (I hadn’t been looking all that hard): Regia Tweed 4-Ply. I bought some in a creamy white and a horsey brown, counted stitches on the original and made a guess at the needle size, and was off and knitting in plenty of time to finish my reproduction sock for Mr. G’s birthday at the end of November. I gave it to him, but hadn’t woven in the ends because I wanted to make sure it fit comfortably. It did. He was delighted.

So this week I wove in the ends.

Ãœbersock at left, reproduction at right. Look, it’s got cat hair on it already.

Mr. G can walk like an Egyptian…

… and can almost still twist himself into a reasonable first position. Remind me to tell you sometime about how he took ballet with eight-year-old girls when we were in college. (I guess I just did.) I love a sense of adventure in a man, don’t you?

He’s already worn them three times.

* The kind of reproduction that doesn’t involve making babies. I didn’t even think of that sense of the word until I’d already posted this, dudes.

Last week was my spring break, but the glorious weather was reserved for this week. Our vacation saw some beautiful sunbreaks, but we were precipitated upon in every possible manner, too: rain, hail, sleet, and snow each made forceful appearances. But this week has brought sun to bask in, and the first spontaneous neighborhood gathering of the season despite chilly temperatures after sunset. Four families sat on our northerly neighbors’ front steps for wine and chat and baby squeezing: this camaraderie is one of the chief reasons I love living on my street.

The garden is stirring, the lilac is leafing out, and I’m sowing hollyhock and sweet pea seeds in my meager patches of full sun. (I had to try with the hollyhocks, because I’ve always wanted some, and because these are called Outhouse hollyhocks. How could I resist? My friend Betsy, who tends the school gardens, shares my fascination for plants with charming names. You should have heard us exulting over the seeds for French Breakfast radishes (which we decided are probably what Anais Nin liked to eat before a productive morning’s work writing her erotica), Bloody Butcher corn, Moon and Stars watermelons, and some lettuce with a German name that allegedly means “speckled like the back of a trout.”)

Spring felt so irresistible this week that I went on a little spree, thanks to last year’s birthday generosity from friends:

Whee, fabric! I have a cute (and easy, Vogue promises) summer dress pattern for this. I’m going to practice on the Alexander Henry in the middle, and once I’ve honed my skills (invisible zippers, yikes!), make a second in the beautiful Japanese Kokko at left. I also picked up Bend-the-Rules Sewing, of which I have read much good on the blogs. And that yarn lurking in the background? It’s Classic Elite Soft Linen, and it’s for an Indigo Ripples skirt. Katrin and I have been promising each other a two-woman knitalong for this pattern, and when I saw Clara Parkes’s review of the Soft Linen, I knew I’d found my skirt yarn. All the wool and alpaca content means it won’t be a true hot-weather garment, but there’s plenty of ventilation in that peek-a-boo lace, and in Portland I’ll get more wear out of a skirt that I can pair with tights when the temperatures are lower.

Oh, and the post title? If it looks like gobbledygook, you may not have been nourished on enough medieval English rounds in your childhood. This is the best Spring song I know.