Tapestry.

First, the news:
* Boo! Volume Two is out! I'm honored to be included, as some of my favorite indie authors also have stories in this anthology. Revenge of the Remora is my first-ever vampire story, so please be gentle with me. (It turns out that you can read my whole story via the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon -- but I hope you'll consider buying the book anyhow, because the other 12 stories in the collection are terrific.)
* Humongous thanks to those of you who voted for my covers in the 2014 BookGoodies Cover Contest. I was very excited to learn that Annealed won a Judge's Choice Award. Feel free to head over and take a look at the winners -- there were some beautiful covers in this year's contest.

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I must have had flash fiction (and knitting) on the brain this afternoon. Before I dove into editing Seasons of the Fool, I found myself dashing off a little something. It may end up in the short story collection I've been mulling over, or it may not. 

Anyway, here it is. I'm calling it Tapestry.

Pschemp via wikimedia commons

This is supposed to be fun.

She stared, disconsolate, at the more-or-less even stitches pooling in her lap. This was her first attempt at knitting a garment. She intended to make something she could wear to work, so she had chosen smooth, black yarn in a fine gauge. The clerk in the yarn shop had persuaded her to pick a simple pattern; “elegant,” the woman had called it, with a bit of interesting detail at the neckline that the clerk assured her would be well within her capabilities as a beginning knitter. 

But she was nowhere near the neckline yet. Not even close. Oh, the bottom ribbing had been kind of interesting (*knit, purl, repeat from *) but she had completed that ages ago. Now she was into what a more accomplished friend called the boring torso: nothing but knit stitches, around and around, seemingly forever.

The pattern called for twenty-one inches of boring torso.

She measured her knitting again. Still just five inches! How could that be? She was sure she had done at least two rounds since the last time she measured. Shouldn’t she have gained a quarter-inch, at least?

She’d picked black because she wore a lot of black. She wanted to look professional at work. Professional, yet sophisticated. Elegant. 

That shop clerk must have had her pegged in about half a second.

She’d never get to twenty-one inches. She’d stab herself in the eye first. Or maybe she’d go back to the shop and stab that clerk in the eye. Now there was an idea with promise.

She wrinkled her nose and cast about for a less violent form of salvation. Her eyes landed on a bag of yarn in the corner, and lit up.

In her first flush of enthusiasm over her new hobby, she had gone a little crazy at her local yarn shop. Colors, textures, weights had meant nothing to her; she had just picked out any yarn that spoke to her. One skein each. Not nearly enough of anything to make anything from.

But she was pretty sure they would all go with black.

She set her project aside and dumped the bag’s contents on the floor: sapphire blue, rich purple, loamy greenish-brown, vibrant fuschia. A rusty orange-red that had reminded her of autumn leaves. Turquoise as brilliant as a summer sky. 

She greeted the riot of color like an old friend, stroking each skein against her cheek as she sorted them into piles. Choosing five skeins that she thought looked amazing together, she gave the rest a loving pat as she laid them gently back in the bag.

Then she ripped her boring torso back to the ribbing and began again. The resulting sweater might not turn out to be elegant, or even professional. But damn it, it was going to be fun.

*** 

Have a fun week, everybody.

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These moments of colorful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.