Youngest Brother reveals freakish grasp of fabric industry

With all the shuffling about this summer—that is, the move from Philadelphia to California, with a vacation in Berlin and stops in London (Heathrow and Gatwick!), Atlanta, and Phoenix—I've seen more than enough airports and missed making any mention of Middle Brother's wedding in St Louis.

The wedding brought nearly every relation I have out of the woodwork (one wonders what was left of the woodwork, in fact), but more relevant to the topic at hand was the Mother and I dragging Middle and Youngest Brother to a quilt shop while waiting for the Other's plane. It was a pretty good shop, with 15% off their vast array of cottons.

While I stacked bolts under my arm, Youngest Brother proved that I am not the only male in the family to have developed an appreciation of fabric. The Mother was on the hunt for pre-Civil War reproduction prints, a new territory for her, and Youngest Brother spotted one he thought she would like. “It looks like the Jane Austen Collection,” he suggested, and the Mother and I burst into laughter at the thought that he was even aware of there being specific fabric lines, much less that he could name one, much less that he could aesthetically categorize a stray fat quarter. We unfurled the chunk to discover that, yes, in fact, he had accurately identified the fabric. We were stunned. As one of the Mother’s quilting buddies said about my appliqué stitches, it must be genetic.

But he's not just watching the needle arts from afar. I've mentioned Youngest Brother's sock creatures before, and he e-mailed while we were in Berlin to say he'd made this one for me. Rather impressive, eh? I especially like the stripes, oblong head, and dangly ear things.

However, the promised creature has yet to arrive. Where be it, boy? I mean, you've only just started college, and I can't imagine what could be more pressing than shipping it off to yours truly.