Yarn to Go by Betty Hechtman Read Free Book Online Page B

orb of fuzzy purple yarn with bits of jewel-toned metallic highlights that blended nicely with her pink velour pants and matching zippered jacket. When she looked at the label, her face clouded. “Cashmere?”
    “You might not have filled out a questionnaire, but somebody did for you. It was clear from it that you’d always only used inexpensive yarn and right now you needed something luxurious and special.”
    Olivia felt around the bag. “There are so many skeins.”
    “You’re going to be making a shawl. And when you finish it, every time you wrap it around yourself, it’ll remind you that you’re special.”
    Olivia seemed unimpressed. “Save the heartwarming stuff for the others. It’ll take more than some fancy yarn to get me past this weekend.”
    “Let me be next,” Edie said. She turned to the group. “I’ve been on two of these special retreats before, and Kris is like a mind reader. You should have seen the things she came up with for the others.”
    Kris gave Edie a broad smile. For all of her chatter, I was glad that at least one person was enthusiastic about the retreat.
    “Oh my. Just what I wanted!” she exclaimed, taking some wiggly things out of her bag. “Turbo circs,” Edie said, as she put the metal needles with cables between them on the table. She looked at the instruction sheet. “Fabulous. I’m making two socks at the same time using both of the circs.”
    Was she speaking a foreign language? What were
circs
?
    “I’m not much of a knitter,” Lucinda said, taking her bag. Instead of inspecting the contents, my friend let Kris tell her what was in it.
    “Yes, I understand that you are just a fledgling knitter and that you only know how to knit,” Kris said, and then I stopped her.
    “Excuse me, but what you just said doesn’t make sense,” I said. Coming to my friend’s aid made me feel useful. For a moment, anyway. Why were they all laughing at me? Edie rolled her eyes so many times she must have made herself dizzy.
    “Kris, do you want to explain or should I?” Edie said, smiling.
    I was glad when Kris took over. She explained it in a way that made me feel less stupid. How was I supposed to know that while it was called knitting, there were actually two different kinds of stitches? It got even more confusing. If you only did the knit stitch, it was called the garter stitch, and if you knitted one row and purled the other, it was called the stockinette stitch. Yikes.
    Lucinda knew how to do the garter stitch, which actually meant she knew the knit stitch. The scarf she was going to make required her to learn how to purl. Kris lost me when she said Lucinda would actually be doing the seed stitch, which was to alternate between knitting and purling in the same row. It made me dizzy, but the main thing was Lucinda seemed happy with it.
    Kris went back to the bin and extracted two bags, announcing the mother-daughter team was next. Besides their constant fussing, the most notable thing about them was their hair. Both women had the kind of hair I would have loved. The long, wiry curls had so much volume, they almost stuck out sideways. I guessed the color would be called something like chestnut. Only Melissa’s had a few silver hairs mixed in. Kris approached the pair, and Melissa reached out for both bags. Kris dodged her reach and made a determined effort to hand each woman her bag.
    Melissa watched as her daughter began to search through her bag, setting out the contents on the table. Sissy took out several skeins of light blue wool, a pair of needles and an odd-looking hook. “Cables!” the young woman exclaimed after reading over the pattern she’d taken out. “I’ve always wanted to make something with cables, but I was afraid to try.”
    “You never told me,” her mother said. “Well, we can work on them together this weekend.” Melissa began emptying her bag, but her expression sagged as she took out needles and two peanut-shaped skeins of yarn, one black and