And Then You Dye Read Free

by way of art materials.
    It was such fun being an artist. Especially a rich one. Famous, too. She’d always known she was artistic, but now she was also an
Artist
. Her picture had been in the newspapers more than once, there had even been an article about her in a national magazine, and, best of all, her work was in museums and art galleries.
    Of course, not everyone agreed she was truly an Artist, but the people who thought she wasn’t were wrong. It was because she used a needle instead of a paintbrush. But that made her unique, and being unique was a really big part of becoming a famous Artist. And having some “attitude” helped, too, though Irene wasn’t sure exactly when she was showing “attitude” and when she was simply giving an opinion.
    What she did know was that she wanted to start work on a new piece. (How glorious it was to be able to not work on a piece until the drive to do it was firmly established!) It was going to be a small one, after several years of increasingly larger ones. But dense, very dense. She closed her eyes and could almost see it. She knew it was going to be busy, with lots of overlapping detail in lots of fancy stitches. An abstract, of course. Done in shades of yellow, green, tan . . . and white? Maybe not white. And maybe some touches of blue. The vision was not yet clear. She needed to see the fibers she was going to use, touch them with her fingers, inhale their scent.
    And where was she going to buy the wools and flosses to use on her piece?
    She could call a cab—she had never learned to drive—and go to Stitchville USA over in Minnetonka, or Needlework Unlimited in Edina. But perhaps she should start at her favorite needlework supply store, Crewel World. They were right here in town and had been the ones who first recognized her amazing skills and encouraged her to present herself not just as a skilled stitcher but as a true Artist. They were among her oldest friends.
    Irene rose onto her toes, swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees, then started walking swiftly down the sidewalk. She was a slender woman in her late forties with very curly black hair cropped short, dark shining eyes, and a slightly crooked smile. She wore a brightly patterned heavy cotton skirt that came nearly to her ankles, brown sandals over navy blue socks, and a white peasant blouse with a scoop neck and puffy short sleeves under a navy blue sweater vest she’d knit herself. Irene bought most of her clothes at secondhand stores, a holdover from her impoverished days, and she saw no reason to change, especially since a reporter had once described her dress habits as “endearingly eccentric.”
    So she sailed down the street with her head held high, looking forward to a pleasant, profitable visit with her good friend, Betsy Devonshire.
    Meanwhile, Betsy and Godwin had their heads together at the library table. “I don’t think this will be as difficult as you’re thinking,” Godwin said, gesturing at the legal-size pad with notes scrawled all over it.
    “Have you ever run a contest?” asked Betsy.
    “Well, no, but I know Margot did, and she said they weren’t hard to do.” Margot was Betsy’s late sister, who founded Crewel World years ago. Godwin had worked for her before starting to work for Betsy.
    Betsy remembered her sister as an incredibly organized and hardworking woman, traits more feebly present in herself. She said, “We’ll want to keep this as simple as possible.”
    What had happened was that Alix Jordan, a steady customer of Betsy’s shop, had been moving into pattern designing, and had come in ten days ago with an open chevron pattern of nine vertical rectangles outlined in black to be filled with—what? She had several ideas and brought them to the shop for opinions.
    Betsy couldn’t decide, and had offered to conduct a poll among the shop’s customers. But Godwin had had a better idea.
    “Hey, Alix, how about we offer just the template you’ve designed, and hold a