These days, June Pardue can most often be found at her home in the woods in Chickaloon, weaving hot water-softened beach grass strand by strand into a complicated pattern while she listens to Russian language tapes or the evening news.

In 140 hours or so, she will have a pair of Alutiiq grass socks - the first that have existed for many years. She will also have single-handedly revived a long dormant art form.

Alutiiq men and women originally used Alutiiq grass socks, called uuleegux^, as an insulating layer between fur socks and boots.

But they haven't been made in decades, if not a century, though bundles of grass are still used as boot insoles to keep feet dry and warm.

The Alaska Heritage Museum commissioned Pardue, 58, to create a pair of grass socks for their permanent collection this fall. They will be the first new piece the museum has acquired in years.

"It's pretty unusual for the museum," said Tom Bennett, the museum's curator.

The knowledge of how to make the grass socks had been all but lost.

"It hasn't been done in my lifetime," said Pardue, who was born in Old Harbor on Kodiak Island.

So Pardue, who is of Alutiiq and Inupiaq heritage, started from scratch: studying the fine weaving pattern in museum displays and examining photographs.

The first sock she produced was thrown away. It didn't look right, she says. She knew she had to try again.

Pardue works using grasses gathered on summer trips to Kodiak Island.

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They are soft, almost silky, and she can smell the tang of salt and ocean in them, she says.

She likes to work from home, where her home is surrounded by trees and she can hear birds chirping. In the summertime, she can smell her daughter's smokehouse nearby and can count on her grandchildren to help her hang grasses collected for weaving.

"I still love the village lifestyle," she says.

Today, she's almost done with one sock. Then she'll start on the other - another 70 hours of work. She needs to be done by December 15th, in time to present them to the Alaska Heritage Museum.

Pardue, who is also renowned for her grass baskets, ornate jewelry and fish skin bags, helped to revive the basket weaving tradition in the villages of Port Graham, English Bay and Sand Point.

"To know that it's revived in those villages, and not dead or lost," she says. "That's rewarding."

Seeing grass take the shape of a object like uuleegux^ has been like watching a forgotten bit of cultural heritage emerge from a long slumber.

"It might have been asleep for a while, but it's awake now," she says.

In January, she'll travel to St. Petersburg, Russia to study ancestral Alutiiq basketry collections at the Kunstkamera Museum.

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