Page 13 of Karma Kitty Christmas
Luca felt totally inadequate, which was why he said the next thing. “Well, I haven’t had any complaints so far.”
The flat-eyed gaze Isaac gave him was absolutely glacial. Luca couldn’t remember being this intimidated since Mrs. Schraven in the second grade.
“You said you wanted to help,” he said with that same teacher tone he remembered from Mrs. Schraven.
“I do,” Luca told him sincerely. “I just feel like… like I’m too dumb to do this.”
Isaac’s expression softened. “Nonsense.” Such an old-fashioned word. “Stay right here for a second. I’ve….” He stopped. “Never mind. Set that down and come with me.”
“Where we going?” Luca asked.
“The yarn store. You look like a bulky-weight acrylic sort of learner.”
Luca would find out later that it was like Mrs. Schraven saying he needed to take a “special” sort of math, but Isaac was so nice about it—about everything, really—that he actually took that the way it was intended, with compassion and his best learning style at heart, and not like “special” was the exact opposite of special.
The craft store was sort of fun.
Luca had been with his sister before, for things like putting together a photo album for his grandparents or picking out a silk-flower arrangement for her apartment. But his grandma—and Isaac—both usually bought their yarn at smaller boutique sort of local businesses, of which there were only a few in the area. His grandma had a thing for natural fibers—wool, alpaca, organic cotton—and Luca figured Isaac might too, although the baby yarn had been acrylic, just finely spun. (Apparently acrylic yarn was easier to wash and would last longer than the baby would be a baby through multiple washes. Luca was a fan.)
The craft store carried bright, sturdy, beautiful yarn, a lot of itmuchthicker than what Luca had been so terrified to work with earlier. Isaac smiled as Luca started to stroke a furry strand of something that appeared to be a densely packed caterpillar of fiber and said, “No, not that yarn, Luca. You need to learn what your stitches look like, and that sort of hides them.” He gesturedto a couple of shelves with thick yarn wound into both cakes and skeins. “Here, but make it something bright. People don’t realize this, but color makes a big difference in how easy it is to see what you’re doing, and being able to see what you’re doing—or feel it—makes a big difference in how you learn. So something big and bright.”
“How much?” Luca asked, and Isaac frowned briefly.
“How about three skeins or two cakes?” he said after a moment. “We can start with making a scarf. Then once you learn the stitches, you can learn how to make a granny square for one end, and then one of the blanket squares for the other end. By the time you’re done with the scarf, you’ll be able to help with the blanket.”
“But who’s the scarf for?” Luca asked.
Isaac grinned. “Anyone you want. Includingyou.”
“I’ll make it for Allegra,” Luca said, grabbing a striped cake in pink, purple, and white. “I’ll be able to see this just fine, and that way I can give her something nice for her birthday in October. It’ll give me a deadline.” It was his turn to shrug. “I’m a contractor—we work better with deadlines.”
Isaac’s laugh was starting to… do things to him. Pleasant things. Happy things. Things that made him wish he hadn’t gone for the clumsy, swaggering come-on and had bided his time instead.
“How’s she doing?” Isaac asked, putting Luca’s yarn in the red basket he held by the handles.
Luca followed him down the brightly colored shelves and watched as he stopped, searching a shelf of yarn that seemed to call to him.
“She’s doing okay,” he said. “She’s—well, my apartment is tiny, and I’m bummed I can’t give her a pay raise anytime soon. I mean, we’re going to need a better place for her before the kid comes along. I thought you and Nonna didn’t buy yarn here?”
Part of the diversion was that he didn’t want to talk about how Allegra spent all day every day looking like she couldn’t stop crying, but part of it was true interest. He got that there were politics and snobberies in every craft known to man, but he just didn’t understand his grandmother’s yarn prejudices, and he was hoping Isaac could give him the key.
“We both like wool,” Isaac said absently. “But I’m going to need some more of that baby yarn to make the blanket you picked out—or even any of the ones the kids are designing, and it’s really sad, but I want to make themall, because they arereallystunning.”
Luca noted that the baby yarn was down on the other end of the shelf.
“So what’s this?” he asked.
“This is a wool/acrylic combination,” Isaac said. “And it’s in a lot of bright kid’s colors. See, I make the kids hats and scarves every year, and I can get this kind of yarn at my usual yarn place, but this is onsale, and I’m trying to decide how much I want to pick up.”
Luca noted that it was 50 percent off, with extra discounts for volume. “Well, given how much you do yarn stuff for the kids, wouldn’t you want to getallof it? That looks like areallygood price.”
“It’s anamazingprice,” Isaac said and gazed woefully at the handbasket in his hand. “We’re gonna need a bigger basket.”
Luca cackled at theJawsreference. “You start picking out colors—I’ll go get you the bigger boat.”
By the time he returned, Isaac had stuffed his handbasket and was busy shoving more of his picks into an empty shelf. The racks containing the sale yarn looked nearly picked clean, and Isaac was giggling to himself in a way that was not quite sane.
“Okay,” Luca murmured soothingly, dumping the chosen yarn into the basket. “Here we go. Don’t forget the baby yarn or you’ll just be back here later.”
