Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 1 Volume 2

We Went Ahead and Made Some

Dad went to bed right after supper, since he had been on morning shift. Quietly doing handiwork at the dinner table was the perfect way to kill time until our own bedtimes without disturbing his sleep. Once he was in the bedroom, I talked to Tuuli and Mom about the handiwork.

"Freida's hair ornament is so popular that a lot of people are asking where they can buy them, so Benno asked me if I could start my winter handiwork early. He wants a lot of hairpins just like the one we made Tuuli."

"...But, honey."

Mom and Tuuli glanced at each other and looked at me with doubtful expressions. It was clear that while they could help, they didn't want to do extra work at an already busy time.

That was about what I expected, so I took out two middle coppers from my tote bag as proof and clinked them onto the table. "I asked to be paid ahead on the first one. Benno will pay this much per flower part."

Mom and Tuuli stood up immediately with a clatter and pulled the table closer to the hearth for the extra light, little though it was, without a word.

"Wait, what?" I was left sitting alone on my chair, stunned. Before I could even start to recover, Tuuli took three pairs of thin sewing needles from the sewing box and Mom brought the thread-packed basket out of the storage room. I climbed off the chair, overwhelmed at their perfect coordination.

As I weakly pulled my chair to the table, Mom spoke to me. "Myne, where's the finished one we can use as an example?"

"Mmm? I gave it back to Tuuli already," I said, leading Tuuli to quickly take her hairpin out of her own box. The noise she made rustling through her box made Dad call out asking what was going on, but Mom just said it was "nothing" and to "have a good night, dear."

After getting my chair to the table, I climbed up onto it and saw that they had already finished preparing everything.

"Myne, what colors should we make?" asked Mom while rustling through the basket of thread, but the specific colors didn't matter. All we had to do was make hair ornaments with the same design as Tuuli's.

"We don't know the hair colors and favorite colors of our individual customers, so he just wants us to make several of a bunch of different colors. You can just pick three different colors like Tuuli's hairpin and make as many flowers as hers has."

"Makes sense. How about white, yellow, and red?" 

"Seems nice and cute to me."

As soon as I gave my approval, Mom began knitting at a furiously high pace. She knew how to make the hair ornaments from prior experience, and thus had nothing holding her back. A small flower that would take me about fifteen minutes to sew only took her five minutes.

"Uh huh, the more colors to pick from the better. I think I'm going to go with white, yellow, and blue. The same colors my own hairpin has. What colors will you pick, Myne?" giggled Tuuli while picking out her favorites from the basket filled with a rainbow of colors. It seemed she really liked the hair ornament I made for her, which made me happy.

"I think I'll go with pink, red, and green. Green flowers kind of look like normal plants, which is super cute, right?"

"Mhm. Really cute. But... Hey, Myne. How do you make these?" Tuuli, seemingly not wanting to interrupt Mom's intense focus, scooted her chair next to mine. Since I had made Tuuli's hairpin as a gift for her, she had no experience making the same kind of flowers.

"It's not that hard. You just do this, and this..." I showed Tuuli how to make the small flowers while I sewed them. They were much easier to sew than Freida's roses, so Tuuli mastered the technique in no time.