Until recently, the only garment ever made specifically for me was a dowdy macramé sweater scarred with Newport Light burns. Actually, it wasn't a sweater—just a sleeve, constructed over many years with a characteristic mix of love and laziness by my grandmother, a woman who believed that all children needed one sweater knitted just for them but who also used knitting as an instant soporific after M*A*S*H repeats, a few crèmes de menthe and 40 or so cigarettes. Had she lived to be 100 instead of 75, she still would not have finished the second sleeve.
The incomplete sweater never caused...