Read Online Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 by Unraveled Sleeve - Free Book Online

other hand, things were scheduled to begin early tomorrow morning. Perhaps everyone had gone to bed. She stepped carefully across the room, feeling her way with hands and toes. Finding the door, she leaned against it, listening. Silence.
    She felt her way back to the bed and the robe at the foot of it. She loved her robe, a real antique of gray flannel with broad maroon stripes. It was much too big for her, covering her ankles and crossing deeply in front. She liked to think it had once belonged to Oliver Hardy. She tied it on, pushed her feet into her felt slippers, then went on noiseless feet to the door again, and out.
    The hallway was dimly lit, the stairs down to the dining room a little brighter. The dining room itself was an immense dim cavern, its sole source of light the lounge, which was brightly lit. There were about twenty stitchers at work in there. Betsy paused outside the doorway. The stitchers were all dressed, and here she was in night-clothes.
    No, wait, there was a woman in a velour nightgown. And there, another woman in a lovely peignoir. So now Betsy felt frumpish.
    And then she felt annoyed. She wanted her knitting, it was in that room, she wasn’t naked, so why shouldn’t she go get it? She straightened her spine and walked in.
    Some of the women smiled at Betsy, but most just gave her an incurious glance and continued with their work and talk. “I call them CASITAs, Can’t Stand IT Anymore,” one woman with flashing blue eyes was saying. “You know, an acre of blue or sixteen yards of backstitch. I keep them in a big drawer.”
    The woman she was talking to laughed. “CASITAs, I like that, Melly! I keep mine at the bottom of the pileof UFOs, hoping I’ll never work my way down to them.”
    Betsy found her bag sitting on one of the coffee tables. She retrieved it and made her escape.
    Back upstairs, she opened the door to the room as quietly as she could, and found the light on and Jill sitting up with a magazine. “If you weren’t back in another two minutes, I was going to come looking for you,” she said.
    â€œI’m sorry,” apologized Betsy. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
    â€œYou couldn’t have helped it, I’m a light sleeper,” said Jill. “What’s up?”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep, and then I remembered I left my knitting downstairs. I was going to sit up awhile in the lounge, but there’s a whole group holding a session.”
    â€œWell, this is a stitch-in. There are women in attendance who will get maybe an hour of sleep a night. James will probably lose money just on the coffee. But I’m glad you’re back, I want to show you something.” Jill closed the magazine and handed it to Betsy. “Here, look at the cover.”
    It was American Needlework Magazine, and the cover featured a piece of linen with a bouquet of cross-stitched pansies surrounded by hardanger squares. “I brought it because I’ve been thinking of trying hardanger,” Betsy said. “Kate does it, you know.”
    â€œYes, but that’s not what I mean. Look at the designer, her picture is up in the corner.”
    There was an inset in the upper left corner of the cover, a head-and-shoulders photo of a painfully slender blond woman wearing a blue and white Scandinavian sweater with silver fastenings. The cover announced an interview with Kaye of Escapade Design, and an original pattern designed by her for the magazine’s readers.
    â€œOh, my,” said Betsy.
    â€œShe’s even wearing the same sweater you described, down to the pewter fasteners.”
    â€œYes, I see that,” said Betsy. She opened the magazine and found the interview with Kaye and skimmed the first few paragraphs. A larger photo of Ms. Kaye in a sunlit room accompanied the article—the cover shot had been cropped from this photo. Betsy said, “I read this article. When I read about the mystery