I Dream of Horses

Last night I sewed some pillowcases for the girls with fabric I'd originally bought for carry-all totes but realized was not really enough for a good-sized bag.  There wasn't enough of the print to make full pillow-cases, so I used the solids (which I'd bought for lining the bags) and pieced them onto the ends of the cases.  The proportions are not really what I'd do on purpose, as it were, but needs must and all.  I was rather pleased with myself that there is not a raw edge visible anywhere, as the edging is folded over inside and out to meet the patterned fabric, and the seams are all French.  Finished size 20x30 inches (51x76 cm).

David came in from a bike ride this morning and said, "I really shouldn't tell you this, but there's a garage sale around the corner with lots of yarn."  "Lots" didn't really describe it, either.  Boxes and boxes and boxes, plus ribbons (cloth and gift), laces and other notions, dozens of hats.  The lady said that her mother had just moved into an assisted-living place, and she's been cleaning out the condominium.  "The craft stuff will be out tomorrow morning."  It was a little sad to think about, really, what we leave behind.

I bought a half-dozen balls of kitchen cotton for new dishcloths, and this length of woven ribbon, which I don't really have a plan for, but I liked the colors and that it was pretty from both sides --

Last week I read The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, a memoir about seriously geeking out on Laura Ingalls Wilder and the "Little House" books.  I say that with about 30% gentle revulsion -- you know, the way you draw your skirts in a little -- and 70% secret envy that I haven't done all of the things McClure has.  Having grown up, like so many of us did, feeling somehow a part of Laura Ingalls's life through her books, McClure succumbed to the temptation to try some of the things that Laura experienced -- wearing a sunbonnet, making candy by pouring maple syrup in the snow, twisting hay into sticks, churning butter -- and to visit all of the places where Laura lived.  The book is actually more serious in places than I thought it would be, and McClure has some interesting things to say about Rose and the contentions that it was actually she who did most of the writing, as well as about why we continue to find the books so compelling.  But she is also at times laugh-out-loud funny -- you can tell that she, too, has that mixture of revulsion and fascination when she comes across some real "Little House" um, aficionados -- although, in an appealing way, much more often her humor is about her own self-admitted dorkiness.

I also learned something I hadn't known before, that Almanzo is not pronounced, as I have for years assumed, all-MON-zo.  There is in fact a recording of Laura herself in later life -- she sounds, I thought rather wistfully, like someone's Midwest grandma (like my Midwest grandma) -- and she says the name almost as though it were two words, the first rhyming with "pal", Al MAN-zo.  (This is so obviously where Royal's nickname for his brother, "Manny", and Laura's own nickname for him, "Manly", came from that I wonder it didn't occur to me before, but it is still going to take some serious mental adjustment.)

And just because I like the idea of seeing the faces behind the stories, here are some photos of the Ingallses --

Pa and Ma, Charles and Caroline Ingalls.  I don't know the date -- perhaps someone else does -- but Ma looks fairly young.  Pa's beard always surprises me, as it is completely out of my own experiences of beards, as well as nothing like the Garth Williams illustrations.  I might like the second photo a bit better, perhaps because it is more "like" Pa, somehow, with his hair not staying slicked down, and his eyes looking as though the twinkle is not far away --

Carrie, Mary, and Laura.  Carrie hasn't quite grown into the hand-me-down dress yet, I think.  Laura's hand has been pointed out, I think by Zochert, as pent-up energy, but you know, I think it's just resting on the back of Mary's chair.

Laura as a teenager in DeSmet.  Remember her cutting the bangs and curling them with her slate pencil?

Ma, Carrie, Laura, Pa, Grace, and Mary.  (Does anyone look good sitting in a bustle?  My own great-great-grandmother's photograph looks the same, as though she's about to slide out of her chair -- and curiously enough, with a similarly-misshapen bust, as though the stays aren't the right size any more.)

 

This is the iconic portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Author -- it's on the bookplates I sent away to Mansfield for all those years ago, that still grace the endpapers of my copies of her books -- but I think I prefer the other lesser-known one, which I'd never seen before now, though it is obviously from the same photographic sitting:

"But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods.  She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle.  She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

"She thought to herself, 'This is now.'

"She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now.  They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.  It can never be a long time ago."

Comments

[Mary Lou]

It's too late for me to change my mental pronunciation of Almanzo. Sounds like a fun book. A few years ago my nephew was visiting from San Antonio in the winter and we had to put maple syrup on snow.

[Sarina]

When my mother moved to Assisted Living three years ago, I donated a carload of yarn to Project Linus. It is sobering how much stuff can build up.