Back in the room that evening, while Esme was at a lesson, I rested against the wall with a thin bed pillow behind my back to finish a sweater I’d been knitting. The cotton yarn, provided by the weaving studio, had been spun by hand on a wooden spinning wheel. In this raw state, it was the shade of cooked oats. As I knitted, I envisioned the beautiful color the sweater could be if soaked in a dye pot for an hour or two. A warm pink, a sugary brown, maybe even a deep crimson. I could use the left-behind make-up for dye, melting the pigments into a colored bath. But I’d need at least two gallons of hot water and a cup of salt, and that was difficult to find.
After shaping the neckline and decreasing to the final stitch, I released the sweater from the needles, folded it on top of the bed, a
