How to Knit a Love Song by Rachael Herron Read Free Book Online Page A

would start. She pulled up a piece of the yellowed newspaper. Was there anything else in there?
    Her hand hit a piece of wood. And then another one.
    Abigail pulled one out.
    It couldn’t be. It looked like…
    It was.
    Abigail held up the flyer for a spinning wheel. A gorgeous, dark, wooden flyer that looked antique, or was a very good replica.
    She went in the box farther. More flyers.
    She carried the box out onto the porch into the sun and brought out the next box.
    Bobbins. Scads of them. Made of matching wood.
    Abigail smiled.
    She opened boxes on the porch until she had found all the various pieces that she needed.
    Then she ran to her truck and pulled out her small toolbox. Cade would mock it mercilessly, she was sure, for being small and useless, but she knew it held what she needed.
    Less than thirty minutes later, she had a fully assembled spinning wheel in front of her.
    It was like a strange, good dream.
    And it was beautiful. The wheel itself was hand carved and decorated with carved flowers and vines. The treadle had the same design, and Abigail could hardly imagine putting a foot on such an intricate thing.
    All the pieces were there.
    And she had a feeling.
    Abigail went back in the house and went farther into the front room, over near the stairs. She lifted boxes and shook them, until she found the right heft, the weight she was looking for.
    She carried this box out onto the porch and opened it, not surprised to see the newspaper on top. Underneath, wrapped in muslin and smelling of cedar, was a carded batt of wool, a deep heathered green, beautifully prepared, ready for spinning.
    “I knew it. You crafty thing, Eliza. You’re guaranteeing I don’t go anywhere, huh?” Abigail laughed out loud.
    She pulled off a hank of the wool, attached a leader to the flyer, and sat on the dusty red chair on the porch. She started spinning. Oh, this was joy. This was right. This was what Eliza had taught her: this was what Eliza had found in Abigail’s fingers—this ability to draw the fiber out into just the right kind of yarn.
    She stopped and went back into the house. It only took a few minutes of peering into the boxes to realize there were probably a hundred wheels, and hundreds of pounds of wool.
    “It’s my store, my classroom, my tools,” she whispered. Tears came to her eyes. “My dream. Oh, Eliza.”

Chapter Eight
If you don’t like how your knitting is going, change it. Never be a slave to a pattern, especially one of mine. Make the pattern conform to your will, or burn it cheerfully in the grate and write a new one, a better one.
— E.C.
    W hat was she doing to him? He was behind in a ton of office work, and he had some females that hadn’t been acting right. He had to get down to their paddock this morning and try to figure out if they were sick or not. He didn’t want to call the vet. He was doing okay financially, but that was because he cut corners, didn’t waste anything.
    The opposite of how Eliza had been, Eliza who wouldn’t kill an animal even if it was making the others sick. That is, when she’d noticed they were sick at all.
    The office. He hadn’t seen Tom this morning, but he was probably in by now, too. Cade’s band of sheep was a good size and required both of them, working hard, all the time.
    The smell of coffee greeted him when he opened the door at the back of the barn.
    “Tom?”
    “Hey, boss. Have a coffee. On the house.”
    “Generous of you. Your coffee’s crap.”
    “You’ll drink it anyway.”
    “True.”
    Tom grabbed Cade’s cup from the top of a filing cabinet and filled it. “Fix what ails you.”
    “My coffee would. Yours burns my tongue.”
    “Don’t drink it then.”
    “You seen the ewes in the third paddock?” Cade asked.
    “They look better today. I’ve been keeping an eye on them. I really think that it was just a cold. They all seem fine, except for that older girl we looked at yesterday. I brought her