Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 Read Online Free PDF

John Rettger was standing by the tapestry, still spread across the old table.
    â€œHi, Father John,” said Betsy coming up from behind. He’d been concentrating so hard on the movers that her voice startled him. He shied, then laughed at himself.
    â€œOh, hello, Betsy! I was wondering if you’d come over today. I’ve been standing guard over the tapestry, because I’m afraid someone will pack it up and take it away and it’ll be lost for another decade.” His voice was mild, like his eyes, as if he were used to going unheard or overruled.
    â€œAre there people who would like that to happen?” asked Betsy, surprised.
    â€œNo, no, or at least I’m pretty sure not. It’s just that the contractors are coming early, for a wonder, and we’re not finished moving out yet. And I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve moved, I’ve lost things. Once it was volume twenty-four of our Britannica, Metaphysics to Norway, though all the rest of the volumes were in the box, even the annuals.”
    Betsy nodded. “I once lost a hamster in a move across the street. But I think maybe our cat got him. She’d had her eye on him for months.”
    Father John laughed, then turned to the tapestry. “Well, what do you think?”
    Betsy said, “Oh, I’ve already told Patricia I’ll supply the materials. I brought some samples of wool with me to see if anything I already have matches.” Betsy opened her purse and began laying out the wool in various places on the tapestry. Just having sat in the open overnight had diminished the mildew smell significantly.
    â€œThat’s funny,” she said after a bit.
    â€œWhat?” said Father John.
    â€œWell, Cool Buff matches up here, but Cafe Latte matches over here. I think they must have used different dye lots. Interesting.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by dye lots?”
    â€œManufacturers stir up a big batch of dye using various ingredients. That’s a dye lot. And for some reason, even though they use the same recipe, the next batch doesn’t quite match the first. The label will give it the same name, but stitchers know when they are buying wool or floss to make sure the dye lot number is also the same.”
    â€œBut that didn’t happen with this tapestry, you say. Is that good or bad?”
    â€œGood. It gives me more chances to match colors.” Betsy continued checking, tossing the samples that matched into a little heap on Christ’s mantle. Finished, she reached for them. “Uh-oh.”
    â€œUh-oh what?” asked Father John.
    â€œLook at this.” Betsy pointed to a small area of the dark orange mantle. It was next to a gray sheep, and the mostly horizontal slice looked at first like a part of the sheep’s back. But moth larvae had eaten a small section down to the canvas.
    Father John said, “So you’ll need to give us a few inches of that orange color, too, won’t you?”
    Betsy, grabbing for her sinking heart, couldn’t say anything at first. As she’d already noted, color was a variable thing. It was impossible that the orange colors currently in her shop came from the same dye lot as this twelve-year-old yarn. She could feel the priest waiting for her to reply. “Sometimes it’s hard to match colors,” she said at last. “And if I can’t match that one, we’ll have to redo the entire mantle.” The mantle took up a large area. It was one thing to donate a skein or even a couple skeins of needlepoint wool; it was quite another to donate enough to cover a quarter of this large tapestry. Especially done in basket weave, which by design used a lot of wool, since it was meant to stiffen the fabric on which it was stitched.
    â€œDon’t despair before you find it can’t be matched,” said Father John. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised a few times in my life.”
    Betsy looked to see