Saturday, my daughters, mother (aka Gangi), and I took a little downtown shopping trip in Asheville, NC. We planned to visit several shops but wound up spending all of our time at Virtue, the (and this is not an opinion, but a fact) absolute hands-down best dress shop in Asheville. The girls found great deals on adorable dresses (deals made even better by the presence of Gangi’s credit card) and we left with smiles on our faces, clutching our adorable daisy-print Virtue bags.
This is always great fun for my mother because she and Daddy had such a limited budget when I was little that Mother made all of our clothes. Easter dresses, cowboy suits, neckties, bathing suits, all of it. She’s still the one the grandkids go to for needed mending and alterations. Anyway, now Mother truly enjoys shopping with us and treating us to the little extras she couldn’t afford years ago.
As soon as we got home, we began sorting through our goodies. Among other things, Gangi had gotten Trellace a lovely goldenrod cable knit sweater, embellished with buttons larger than 50-cent pieces. She removed the tags and modeled it for Gangi who oohed and ahhhed.
“Oh I love it Trellace! It looks just great on you,” she said, her glasses perched on her nose as she examined it with her seamstress eyes, looking for stray threads and fabric flaws. “Here’s an extra button,” she said, clipping the little zip-lock baggy off the sweater’s tag. “Don’t lose that!”
Trellace looked over her shoulder at her grandmother and then down at the proffered notion, tentatively accepting it. As she looked at it, clearly uncertain of what to do with such a thing, she handed it back to Mother saying, “Umm, can’t you just keep it Gangi?”
