A Murderous Yarn

still learning the craft and so had to lean heavily on her customers, borrowing finished patterns from them. Sometimes she offered a particularly talented customer free finishing-washing, stretching, and framing, an expensive service-in exchange for the right to display it for a time, or to giving the model maker the materials for a project, plus deep discounts on other patterns and materials, in exchange for doing a particular project.

She had also gained some recent models by a sadder method: Wayzata’s Needle Nest had gone out of business, and Pat had sold Betsy some of her models to hang on Crewel World’s walls. Fineries of Nature was the last of them.

It was a little after noon when Betsy, looking over a new and complex Terrance Nolan pattern, said, “I wonder if we could get Irene to make a model of this for us.”

And as if on cue, the front door went Bing! and Irene came in. Irene Potter was one of Betsy’s most loyal customers. She was also rude, opinionated, passionate, difficult-and an extraordinarily talented needleworker. A short, thin woman with angry black curls standing up all over her head, she had a narrow face set with very shiny dark eyes. Her clothing came from a Salvation Army store. She wasn’t poor, but she put every possible nickel of her income into needlework supplies.

She had a project rolled up under the arm of her shabby winter coat, a faux leopard skin probably thirty years old. “I need your opinion on this,” she said without preamble.

“What, on how to finish it?” asked Betsy from behind the big desk that served as a checkout counter.

“No, just an opinion. Yours too,” she added over her shoulder, not quite looking at Godwin. This was unusual. Irene had a very accurate notion of Betsy’s lack of proficiency but her fear and loathing of Godwin as a gay man normally kept her from acknowledging his expertise in needlework. That most other Crewel World customers thought he had a heightened sense of color and design because he was gay cut no ice with Irene.

Godwin, making a comedy of his surprise behind Irene’s back, smoothed his face to impassivity as he came to stand beside Betsy. Irene took a deep breath, held it, and unrolled the fabric onto the desk.

Betsy stared; Godwin inhaled sharply. It was an impressionistic painting of a city in a blizzard. The snow blew thickly around the buildings and people, blurring their outlines and the shape of a tall plinth in the center of a square.

But the picture wasn’t a painting. It was a highly detailed piece of cross-stitching. “Why, it’s wonderful!” exclaimed Betsy. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Where did you get the pattern, Irene?”

“It’s not from a pattern,” said Irene. “Martha took me to see the exhibit of American Impressionists at the Art Museum last year. I never could see what was so great about Impressionists; those posters and pictures in magazines look like a mess. But prints are nothing like seeing Impressionist paintings for real.”

Betsy nodded. “That’s absolutely true, Irene. I didn’t get Impressionism either, when all I’d seen were prints. Then I saw my first van Gogh in person and I fell in love. Did you see the Art Museum’s exhibit, Goddy?”

“M-hmm.” He seemed very absorbed in Irene’s piece, moving a step sideways and back, cocking his head at various angles.

Betsy continued, “I don’t know why photographs can’t tell the truth about Impressionist paintings. Do you, Godwin?”

“It’s because they use layers of paint, or lay it on thickly, and use lots of texture, so the light moves across it as you approach. Photographs flatten all that out.”

“Yes, I think that’s right. This moves with the light, too. It is truly beautiful. Where did you get it, Irene?” Betsy knew she hadn’t sold a pattern like this to Irene-she had never seen a pattern like this, in her shop or anywhere.

“I did it myself,” Irene said quietly.

Godwin said, “You did? But your work isn’t anything like this!”

Irene gave him a freezing glance and said, “I got to thinking about those paintings, and I went back a second time by myself and I borrowed Martha’s copy of the exhibit catalog, and I thought some more, and I did this. Is it any good?”

“It’s amazing, it’s fantastic,” said Betsy.

Godwin said, “It really is wonderful, Irene. How did you get those swirls of snow?” They weren’t smooth lines, but lumpish streaks, an effect an oil painter gets by using the edge of his palette knife.

“Caron cotton floss,” said Irene. “It’s got those slubs in it, and I just kept working it over the top until it looked right.” A figure in the foreground, walking with the snow pushing her back into a curve, was done in shades of charcoal and light gray, with a touch of wine at the throat and on a package she was struggling not to lose. The curve of her back, done in broken rows of straight stitches, made the viewer feel her strain against the harsh wind.

Betsy leaned closer. It looked to her as if all the figures and images in the work were done with blended stitches. The overall effect was of solid objects seen through a blur of snow.

Godwin, cocking his head at yet a different angle, frowned and said, “I don’t think this is an exact copy of the painting in the exhibit, is it?”

“No,” said Irene, as if admitting to a fault. “Mr. Wiggins’s painting was old; it had old-fashioned cars and wagons pulled by horses. I used modern cars, except for one of those carriages I’ve seen in movies that get pulled by a horse through the park. I liked the way Mr. Wiggins’s horses looked, so that’s why I put one in, too. And I found a photograph in the library of Columbus Circle, so I knew what that tall thing really looks like.”

“Plinth,” said Godwin. “It’s called a plinth.”

Irene ignored that. She said to Betsy, “I was afraid it was too… messy.”

Godwin said, “I think all the overstitching is brilliant.”

Betsy said, “Yes, that gives it an especially wonderful effect. What are you going to do with it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Irene. “I wanted to know first if it was any good.”

“This is beyond good,” said Godwin. “This is… this is art.”

This time Irene glanced at him with respect. “You think so?”

“Yes.”

“I agree,” said Betsy. “Any art gallery would be proud to offer this. Of course, I’d like you to turn it into a pattern. This would be a real challenge for an advanced stitcher, but I’m sure I could sell it. But maybe you should enter it in a competition first. Is there a competition for work like this, Godwin?”

“There are all sorts of needlework competitions,” he said. “It would do well in any of them, I think.”

Irene said, “Then I’ll put it in the State Fair, I guess.” Irene had lots of blue ribbons from the Minnesota State Fair’s needlework competitions.

“Or CATS,” said Godwin. “Hey, they’re coming to Minneapolis in October this year, so you could enter it in both.” CATS was the Creative Arts and Textile Show, which featured needlework designers, classes, and booths selling the latest patterns and fibers. It had a prestigious competition for needlework.

“This is so different from anything I’ve done before,” said Irene, who had in fact never attempted more than slight changes in someone else’s pattern, and who had always selected very literal patterns. “But it felt good doing it. It felt better than almost anything I’ve done before.” She reached for the canvas and began to roll it up.

“Don’t you want it finished?” asked Betsy.

“No, not yet,” said Irene. “Maybe later. I’ve got to get back to work.” She turned and hurried out.

“Probably can’t afford to have it finished,” said Godwin. “She came in here on Saturday and bought nine colors of wool, two skeins of metallics, and a fat quarter of twenty-eight Cashel. She counted out the last two dollars in change. Poor thing.”

Betsy said, “There are a lot of hobbies that pay enough so the hobbyist can at least break even, but this isn’t one of them. Needleworkers can’t sell their work for even what the materials cost, much less the hours spent stitching it. That piece she just took out, she’ll probably end up giving away rather than be insulted by an offer of forty dollars for it. I just don’t understand why fabulously talented people who work with needles and fibers don’t get the recognition that people who work in oil or metal do. It isn’t fair.”

“Would you buy it?” asked Godwin.

Betsy half closed her eyes, picturing it on her living room wall, in a smooth, dark frame… “Gosh, yes.”

“What would you pay for it? I mean, if it was an auction, and you were bidding on it. How high would you go?”

Again Betsy half closed her eyes, imagining raising her hand with a numbered paddle in it. Fifty dollars, a