And Then You Dye Read Free Page B

said.

Three
    S UCH a brilliant inspiration she’d had! Irene was sure she was blessed with a swift, clever imagination, and could be justly proud of it. A blend of exotic fibers! Yes! What an amazing and wonderful idea! She would make the stitchery a tribute to the blend, which would have been impossible—unthinkable, really—just a few years ago. Who back then would have thought bamboo could be made into embroidery floss or yarn? Or soy? Her fingers twitched as in her imagination she ran them across the amazingly soft and smooth fibers coaxed from woody bamboo.
    Progress! That would be the exultant theme! She would make the piece an explosion of joy and triumph! Another success! More praise! Her fame would endure forever!
    Hold on a bit, she thought. She seemed to have gone from a successful piece of Art to her own success. But what a delightful thought, her fame lasting forever!
    Hold on again, maybe not forever. There were lots of Artists famous in their day whose names were forgotten. Perhaps her own name would vanish, too. Worse, it seemed most still-famous artists were unsung in their own day, discovered only after their deaths. So maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that she had recognition now.
    If she were offered the choice—fame while living
or
fame after death—which would she choose?
    That was a difficult question, which Irene earnestly contemplated while walking in the brilliant spring sunshine, its warmth lightly soaking through her dark blue sweater vest onto her thin shoulders.
    Distracted by the warmth, she was sidetracked into thinking about how much she liked the vest, with its complex pattern of welts and big knots, and a heavy but unnoted scatter of orts, tag ends of floss from various cross-stitch patterns she’d worked on. It was her lucky sweater, one she’d knit herself. She often wore it while working on a new project.
    She wasn’t going to work just yet on her newest creation, she decided. Instead, she was going to talk to Hailey Brent again. Hailey was a very interesting woman, very artistic, like herself. Full of ideas and observations. And actually enthusiastic about the soy-bamboo blend Irene wanted for her new project. She had a few samples of it, which she’d given to Irene to try out. The samples had been smooth and easy to work with, so she’d ordered fifty yards. Only eleven days later, it was ready and Hailey was about to dye some of the completed yarn for her. Irene was going to go watch it happen. It was very intelligent of Betsy to put her and Hailey together. Betsy was a good friend.
    Irene had initially thought to find someone to weave some fabric from the soy-bamboo blend, but it turned out that would take too long. Spinning and then weaving the fabric in a large enough piece would take months, and Irene’s creative urge was screaming and yelling for her to
get on with it right now
. If she disobeyed, the project might never be completed. It had happened once before, when her sister was so sick with cancer and Irene had gone to stay with her. She had abandoned that project about birds during that difficult time, and when she finally came back home, all she wanted to do was throw away all those feathers she had collected, the project having somehow decayed in her absence. Even the smell of the feathers was sickening, and she couldn’t get them out of the house fast enough. She’d lived with open windows—in December!—for two weeks to get rid of the smell, it was so awful. The cold coming in through the windows had frozen a pipe in her kitchen, but Irene hadn’t minded. It was worth it, to cleanse the house of the feather smell. Her small nose wrinkled at the memory. She still couldn’t stand to be around feathers.
    Her agent had been very annoyed, but it was worth that, too. She had to do what her muse—what an interesting word!—wanted her to do.
    Hailey, when told the story, had been amazingly sympathetic. Unlike everyone else, who thought Irene was insane. She