The Drowning Spool

by Monica Ferris

“And I,” said an emaciated woman sitting in a wheelchair. She had an austere face and enormous, sad eyes. “I’m Estelle.”

  It turned out that Betsy’s students—there were five, as promised—all sat at one end of the table. Betsy opened her attaché case and handed out the kits. The women immediately opened their bags and sorted through the pieces. While they were occupied, Betsy got out her own kit and assembled the lap frame, made of a smaller and a larger embroidery hoop connected by three short legs, explaining as she went along how to do it. The procedure was simple enough that everyone assembled her own without a problem.

  “Punch needle is more properly called Russian punch needle,” Betsy said. She held up a finished sample of the practice piece, a red heart with a white heart in its center, about four inches square. “See, on this side it looks like a miniature hooked rug.” She handed the sample to the obese woman, who fingered the pile admiringly, glanced at the back side, and handed it along. The last woman handed it back to Betsy. All were smiling in anticipation.

  “The reverse looks like parallel lines of short stitches, which is what it is.” Betsy held up the back of the piece. “You work it on this side, the reverse side, and the loops form on the front.

  “I want you to take up the smaller piece of fabric first, the one with two hearts on it.”

  Four of her students already knew how to loosen the embroidery hoop until it opened. Betsy showed them how to smooth the fabric across the bottom hoop, slide the top one over it, and tighten it again.

  “Make sure your pattern is smooth and not pulled sideways or otherwise distorted.” The very thin woman made an exclamation and a noise of frustration as she loosened the top hoop and adjusted her fabric.

  “Let’s start with the inner heart,” said Betsy. “Pick a color and cut off a length about two feet long. This method of stitchery goes through floss really quickly, so you’ll do it many times. This means you’ll get lots of practice in threading the needle. When you get more skilled, you can cut your floss as long as one yard—even longer. You’ll be working this with three strands of floss, and the skeins are six strands.”

  Betsy showed them how to tap the cut end of the floss to make the strands separate and pull three of them from the others. Most already knew the trick. Betsy smiled. How much easier it was to teach people who already had the basics down!

  “Now, take out the punch needle from the glass tube,” she instructed. The tubes had fat rubber stoppers on them. The punch needle was a little over three inches long, and consisted of a series of graduated cylinders, the last one a hollow needle with a hole in its tip.

  “In the glass tube that holds the needle there’s also a threader. It’s a very fine wire, essential to punch needle but easy to lose, so keep careful track of it. If you drop it on the floor, it’s next to impossible to find again. Best to put it back in the tube every time after you use it.”

  She showed them how to feed the threader loop-first through the hollow needle and up the shaft of the punch until it appeared at the other end. The floss was threaded through the loop and pulled back down and out the end of the needle. Then the blank end of the threader was poked through the hole near the tip of the needle and pulled through. Finally, the threader was removed and carefully stored in the glass tube.

  Then the floss was pulled back until about a quarter inch was just visible through the hole in the end of the needle. One woman made an annoyed exclamation—she had pulled the floss completely through the hole and had to use the threader to pull it through again.

  Betsy demonstrated the punching motion used to feed the floss into the fabric. Some of the women got up and came to stand behind her, watching. She kept her movements slow and deliberate, and the taut fabric made a little popping sound as the needle went through it.

  “Punch through until it stops, lift the needle just barely back out of the fabric, move it a tiny way, less than an eighth of an inch, and punch down again,” she instructed them. “Go slow until you get a feel for this.”

  The women began working on their practice piece. In about two minutes the room was filled with the sound of rhythmic thumping as the group’s hollow needles pierced the pieces of tightly stretched fabric. The obese woman was fastest, the others more deliberate. Some of them turned their lap frames over and exclaimed in pleasure at the raised texture formed by their needles. Others saw with dismay that they were not punching the stitches together closely enough.

  “To correct an error,” Betsy said, “lift the needle up until the stitches you’ve made pull out. Then pull the floss back out through the needle until it’s short above the fabric. If you want to retrace your steps, you have to turn the hoop around. Look on the shaft for a white line. That line shows the direction you should be stitching.”

  Betsy went to each woman, checking her work. She was leaning over one of her students when the door to the library slammed open.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” shouted the shrill voice of an old woman. “Start over!”

  Two

  THE women at the table all looked at Betsy to see what she would do. “Come in, Mrs. Carter,” she said. “I have a kit for you, sit down and take a look at it.” She turned to the others. “Now, where were we?”

  Mrs. Carter made a production out of coming to the table. She pulled out a chair, sat down with a thump, opened her kit, and spread the contents widely in front of her, poking at the lap stand parts, uncapping the glass tube that held the needle and threader and spilling them out. “What’s all this stuff?” she demanded.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Betsy said, kindly but firmly. She turned to the others. “Remember to stay inside the lines, and to make little stitches in parallel lines without overlapping,” she said. Then she went to Mrs. Carter and said, “Now, do you know anything about punch needle?”

  “Of course not, otherwise why would I be here?” Her tone was sharp, but then she winked, drew up her shoulders, and giggled.

  She needed some help assembling the lap stand, but stretched the practice fabric on the smaller hoop with no trouble. She could in no way understand how to thread the punch needle with floss, but after Betsy did it for her, she began punching through the fabric with enthusiasm. “Yippee!”

  “Slow down, slow down,” counseled Betsy, then left her to it and went back to the others, praising their work, suggesting narrower lines to some and shorter stitches to others. Now and again one of them would turn the lap stand over and exclaim with pleasure at the look of the growing field of tight loops, sometimes stroking them with a gentle finger.

  But when Betsy got back to Mrs. Carter, she found that she had begun to punch at random, twisting the punch needle so that it wasn’t laying down the loops evenly, occasionally lifting the needle so far up that it was pulling loops out and leaving loose floss on the back of her fabric.

  “This is fun!” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, holding up her work for examination.

  “I can see you are enjoying yourself,” Betsy said, noting that the random sprawl of loops had wandered from one heart to the other and even into the background. The woman smiled broadly and resumed attacking the fabric with rapid, irregular thrusts.

  “Perhaps if you punched a little more slowly,” Betsy began.

  “Betsy, I’m about to run out of floss already,” said Dot, surprised.

  “Yes, that’s the one big problem with punch needle,” said Betsy, abandoning Mrs. Carter to her craft and going to the speaker. “It goes through floss at an amazing rate. You just let it come close to running out, pull up on the working side to empty your needle, and rethread to continue. If the needle empties on the front, go back to the last stitch and pry it up gently—very gently—with your needle so the loose end is on the back.”

  Betsy had to go around the class and reteach everyone how to thread the needle. It was a counterintuitive process; Betsy had had to resort to the instruction booklet repeatedly herself to learn it.

  By this time Mrs. Carter had lost her th
reader, and three minutes’ searching failed to turn it up. Fortunately, Betsy had brought along half a dozen extra ones, though she took care not to let her students see that, lest they get careless.

  “I have an idea,” said an observant knitter at the other end of the table, seeing Betsy about to slip a new threader to Mrs. Carter.

  “What’s that?” asked Betsy.

  “I have a refrigerator magnet in my bag. I drop needles often—and it’s very dangerous to step on one with bare feet—and the magnet is useful in locating them. Maybe if we ran it over the floor around Wilma’s chair, you’d get that thing back.”

  “Wilma?”

  “That’s me!” declared Mrs. Carter, as if just remembering her own name.

  “Brilliant!” exclaimed Betsy. “May I borrow your magnet?”

  “No, you go ahead with the class, let me try to find the threader.” She searched her stitching bag, found the magnet, and though a little stiff and uncertain in getting onto her knees, searched the floor beside Wilma. She swept the magnet—it was attached to a plastic poodle wearing a Santa hat—lightly around the carpet and, with a little happy exclamation, came up with the hair-fine twist of wire. It took her less than a minute. Without rising, she held it up.

  “Thank you, Melly!” said Mrs. Carter—Wilma—taking it and tossing it on the table.

  “You’re welcome, Wilma,” said Melly, beginning to struggle back to her feet.

  “Are you all right?” asked Betsy. “Here, let me help you up.” Melly only needed a little help but gave a half gasp, half groan as she straightened. Betsy walked her back to her chair and stroked her back as she sat down again. “Thank you so much, it was good of you to come to Wilma’s aid.”

  Melly’s “You’re welcome” was accompanied by a smile so sweet that Betsy returned it with renewed gratitude.

  As she went back to her end of the table, Betsy made a mental note to get a good strong magnet to include in her kit.

  “Help me, Betsy,” whined Wilma, holding up her lap stand. “I don’t get it, this stupid thing was fine, but now it isn’t working right again.”

  Betsy patiently showed her how to hold her needle so that it was facing forward, then watched over her for a few minutes, gently correcting her from time to time, until she seemed to understand that she needed to hold the needle with its white mark facing forward and that she should keep her stitches short and even.

  “There it is, ha ha! There it is!” Wilma cried at last in a high, excited voice, having completed half a circuit of the heart. But as soon as Betsy moved on to another woman, Wilma’s needle twisted off center and her movements became random. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, it’s all screwjee again!”

  Craft maven Thistle, who had remained in the room to watch the class, raised her eyebrows at Betsy, signaling an offer to assist. When Betsy nodded assent, Thistle came to sit beside Wilma. “Here now, show me what the problem is,” she said.

  Betsy began explaining to the others that some punch needle stitchers clipped the loops formed by the needle, others didn’t. It was a choice: fuzzy or smooth texture. She produced two identical patterns, one clipped, one not, and handed them around. While her pupils studied both samples, Betsy took notice of Thistle’s conversation with Wilma. She was asking Wilma how to do the work, and listening to her repeat the instructions—a clever ploy, because it clarified them in Wilma’s own mind.

  Betsy came over to check on her and saw that Wilma’s floss had run out without her noticing. Thistle raised her chin as a warning to say nothing, and Betsy decided to follow her instruction.

  When the class was over, Thistle accompanied Betsy back down to the lobby. “What do you think?” she asked Betsy.

  “They’re picking it up so fast, I won’t have anything left to teach after the next class,” Betsy replied. “Except we’re not being fair to Wilma.”

  “I’m sorry about her disrupting the class. She’s a nice person, everyone likes her, and she wants to be a part of everything, but she’s now at a stage where she simply isn’t capable of learning anything new. I suspect by next week she’ll have forgotten all about punch needle—I hope so, because I wasn’t paying close attention to your teaching and couldn’t put floss in that needle if my life depended on it. We’ll pay for her materials, and I’ll just put them in our craft supply cabinet.”

  “Someone told me she has Alzheimer’s.”

  Thistle hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. For her, it’s a slow-progressing disease, but eventually she’ll have to move into the locked ward. I’ll be sorry when that happens.” Thistle touched her nose, then smiled. “Meanwhile, she’s enjoying herself.”

  Betsy nodded. “I sensed that. I don’t know a lot about Alzheimer’s. Does she know that she has it? Is she scared?”

  “I can’t speak for her, I’m not one of her caretakers. I think most of the people with Alzheimer’s understand what’s happening to them, at least at first, and I’m sure they’re frightened—I know I’d be. I think Wilma’s being brave in the face of it. But I also think she’s decided to enjoy the freedom to break some rules, to speak her mind, to behave selfishly. She’s never done any harm to anyone, she’s not cruel—” Thistle cut herself short. “I’m speaking out of school here, sorry.”

  “I understand that, but thank you for helping me understand her.”

  “Next time you come into the library, look at the big picture book on one of the side tables. Wilma used to be a well-known studio photographer, but she also did some nature photography and published a collection of her prints. At first they just look like scenes of lakes, rivers, fields, and forests. But if you look closely, you’ll see there are animals in them, hidden by their natural coloring. Deer, rabbits, foxes—dozens of animals, and all of them almost invisible. Terrifically clever.”

  “I’d like to take a look.”

  “Come early next week—phone ahead so I can meet you at the door again . . . And here we are, back where you came in. Thank you for agreeing to do this, Betsy. I think everyone is enjoying the class. See you next week.”

  On the drive home, Betsy again reminded herself to pack a magnet in her travel case—and to take a look next week at Wilma’s book of photographs.

  Back at the shop, Godwin, Betsy’s store manager, was full of questions. “How was it? he asked. “Did they like punch needle? Did any men turn out?”

  “Six students signed up, all women, and only one looks to be a problem. In fact, the other five are great!” Betsy’s success with the class—and the handsome fee she was to collect—put her in an optimistic mood and she looked with favor around her shop.

  It was looking very attractive. Indirect winter sunlight shone boldly through the big front window, making the rich colors of yarns and flosses glow. They and the carpeted floor absorbed sound, giving the shop a cozy, quiet feel. There were alternating double and triple rows of spinner racks marching across the floor, holding fancy silk and overdyed flosses. An old, well-polished library table stood in the center of the floor, a smaller version of the table in Watered Silk’s library, its center marked with plastic bowls holding scissors, tape, knitting needles, samples of wool and floss, needles, threaders, and magnifying glasses for customers trying out techniques.

  A triple row of eight-inch wooden pegs stuck out along one wall, draped with thin skeins of needlepoint yarns ranging from white and pale yellow at one end, then shading across the rows into oranges, reds, browns, and blues, concluding in deep purples and black. A set of thin canvas doors hung on another wall, to which were pinned hand-painted needlepoint canvases.

  Ceiling-high box shelves divided the shop. The front room was larger, and in the smaller room at the back, the emphasis was on counted cross-stitch. Every inch of available wall in both sections held finished needlework pieces, their beauty meant to intensify a customer’s desire to stitch this one, then to stitch that one, then to stitch the next one, too.

  Best of all, Betsy could see five customers perusing the merchandise.
/>
  Godwin saw the pleased way she was counting them and said, “I hate to bust your balloon, but . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence, but Betsy knew what he was going to say anyway.

  After the crush of post-Christmas sale-seekers, customer numbers had dwindled, which was not unexpected, just disappointing. But those who did come in weren’t buying as usual. In fact, Betsy had been at wit’s end trying to think of a way to boost business. She’d spent more of her outside-the-shop time working on the shop’s web site. She tried posting tips and a list of frequently asked questions, and connecting them to items carried in her shop. She uploaded more photographs of projects finished by proud customers. She linked to Internet “how to” videos. She had increased the number of sales and classes Crewel World offered. All this effort helped, but not a lot.

  Still, five customers on a weekday was pretty good.

  But Godwin shrugged and shook his head. “They’re just looking.”

  “Rats,” muttered Betsy, then: “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “Keep up what we’re doing,” Godwin said. “Sometimes it takes a while for things to sink in.” He was sitting at the library table knitting a circular scarf in exquisite shades of lavender, pink, and purple wool. His fingers moved as if they had a mind of their own, and he barely even glanced at them as they worked the needles.

  Betsy, noting the heap of fine wool on the table in front of him, said, “Why a circular scarf? I thought you loved fringe.”

  “I do. But this isn’t just circular, it’s a Möbius band.” He lifted it up to show the half-twist in the circle.

  Betsy came for a closer look. She said, “Gosh, that’s clever, I should make one. Maybe in a shade of blue to match my new dress.” She smiled thoughtfully and touched the scarf with its twist spilling from his needles. “When I was in my early teens, I learned about the Möbius strip in a math class. There’s something magical about turning a two-sided object into a one-sided one. I used to wonder if it were possible to put a half twist in a three-dimensional object. Would it then be four-dimensional? Maybe if someone could get inside such a thing, he could stop time and live forever.”