Les Foulards Perdus

As most ladies know, a scarf is the perfect combination of sensibility and fashion. One’s neck is protected from chilly air, and one’s outfit becomes instantly chic.

My fuchsia scarf, acquired at Bloomingdale’s in New York years ago, went with me to Mexico City in March. My daughter Rebecca happened to be snapping my photo when a pedestrian stepped into the frame. He had just purchased a cup of fresh fruit from a vendor to the left of those amazing iron gates.

I was as horrified as the man in the photo when a chunk of mango flopped to the ground.

My pink scarf went with us to Museo Soumaya, a building that, like The Guggenheim in New York, has curved exterior walls.

At Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, paintings hang from wires in armatures that allow you to see both front and back. The reverse, with the artwork's history of acquisition, is sometimes more interesting than the painting itself.

I lost my pink scarf a month later during a trip to New York. In an ironic twist, I misplaced it at Bloomingdales’s—not the Bloomingdale’s in Soho where I purchased it, but the one on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. I guess you could say I returned it.

My friend Leslie Levy, director of the International Quilt Museum (IQM) in Lincoln, NE, gave me the next scarf I lost. Leslie and her staff were of tremendous help when plans for the Iowa Quilt Museum (the other IQM) were under way.

Leslie brought her mom, an avid quilter, to Winterset (Quiltropolis) a couple of years ago. I made dinner, and Leslie thanked me with an artsy striped scarf selected from IQM-Lincoln’s gift shop.

My striped scarf went with me to the American Folk Art Museum on a different trip to NY, where I met up with my daughter Mary Fons and mega-quilter Paula Nadelstern. One of Paula's incredible kaleidoscope-inspired quilts was on display. (paulanadelstern.com)

I lost the gift scarf from Leslie in Toulouse, France.

Toulouse is in the southern part of the country, not far from the border with Spain. Nicknamed The Pink City (La Ville Rose) because of its light-red terracotta brick buildings, Toulouse is the starting point of the 17th century Canal du Midi. I was there with my family to bike the canal.

I don’t know exactly when my scarf flew away, but I know it happened on the windy day we walked alongside the Garonne River. The water rushes over a magnificent spillway that is part of the city’s water management system.

A family of punsters, we had fun joking about my vanished scarf: “You Touloused it.” “It’s Toulost!”

The last loss hurt the most.

Earlier that day, on our way to the river, we came across a tiny shop where almost every item inside is delightfully blue.

I posed Rebecca outside 13 rue des Lois because her red jacket contrasted perfectly with the blue storefront.

The shop’s proprietor Annette is an expert with woad, a dye derived from the leaves of the woad plant. Click this, scroll down to Who are we? and in 30 seconds you will be as charmed as we were when the four of us walked through the door of AHPY, Creations bleu de pastel.

Annette attaches a strip of woad-dyed blue fabric to each of her business cards.

I tucked the beautiful scarf Mark bought me into my luggage and needed it a week later, in chilly Montpellier, after our 150-mile cycling adventure (which I will report on from Quiltropolis one day soon). I apparently left my blue scarf behind in one of the cafes where we ate pommes frites and played gin during the final days of our journey.

Postscript: I have been informed a replacement woad-dyed scarf is on its way to me from Toulouse.

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