a chick with sticks (and a computer): Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya! Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is PUB DAY. My beloved book, "Chicks with Sticks (Knit two together)" will hit bookstores, and you, my beloved dozen blog readers will run right out to get yourselves one, won't you? Of course, if you run to your library to check one out, I would also be eternally grateful. I would even be extremely delighted if you waited until Chicks #2 comes out in paperback to get yourself a copy.

But if you did that, you would have to wait an entire YEAR to see what happens to the Chicks next. I hope this excerpt will persuade you that that is impossible to do. Witness the Chicks with Sticks, approaching a new, post-KnitWit local yarn shop called Stockinette:

As she began walking towards the shingle, Scottie’s stomach twisted. Hope and the certainty of disappointment were mixing it up in there, making her a little nauseous. For an instant, she pictured KnitWit—its sunset-colored foyer that made you feel like James walking into the giant peach; the yarn tucked into old soda crates, bookshelves, and cracked ceramic bowls; the pregnant, blue-gray cat named Monkey, meowing irritably at everybody who approached her; Alice whispering knitty wisdom into her students’ ears. . . .

Stop it, Scottie interrupted herself. KnitWit’s gone. Give this place a chance.

She stopped in front of the little storefront and squinted at Stockinette’s glass door. At first, all she could see was her own wavery reflection. Her long, pale-brown hair was flattened on one side after a long day of propping her head on her hand at school. Her recently glossed lips made her heart-shaped face look a little less pale. The scoopy neck of her cotton sweater sat just right on her collarbones (due to relentless sizing and blocking).

With an extra squint, Scottie’s see-through self disappeared and the shop came dimly into view. Now she saw sherberty colors, a white leather sofa, track lighting, and a strip of burlap stuck through with knitting needles. The skewered fabric was hanging from the ceiling and fluttering in the breeze of the air conditioning. . . .

Scottie felt another rush of queasy hope. Willing herself again to forget her KnitWit rewind, she gave her buds a quick glance, then plunged through the shop door. She stopped the moment she crossed the threshold. Was stopped, was more like it, by a series of aromas that thudded her gently in the gut. She smelled dry wool; sunshine trapped in the grooves of the wooden floor; warm sugar. They weren’t exactly on the standard aromatherapy roster, but they were just about Scottie’s favorite scents on the planet.

The long, narrow shop was lined with galvanized tin buckets, mounted horizontally and stuffed with yarn. The poofs and puffs were candy-colored; unnatural in the best way. The bucket-free parts of the walls were splashed with a mellow shade of raspberry and the iMac on the front desk was a retro orange. A woman wearing mega-low jeans was perched behind the iMac, weaving I-cord out of some glinty thread.

“Oh my God,” Scottie breathed as the vibe hit her full-on. Her girlfriends crowded up behind her. They spent a good minute soaking it all in before Tay spoke up.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “This is a knitting store, right? Where’s the dowdy?”

“Tay!” Scottie blurted, glancing shyly at the young woman at the iMac. Luckily, she wasn’t a hoverer or worse, a knitevangelist. She simply giggled at Tay, then returned to her I-cord. Scottie turned her back on the woman and spoke through gritted teeth.

“How can I put this so you’ll get it?” she whispered. “Okay, here’s you: fifteen-years-old; tattooed and pierced; badass extraordinaire; in no way dowdy. You also happen to be a genius with yarn and sticks. So how can knitting be dowdy if you’re a knitter?!”

“A equals b, and b equals c, so a equals c,” Bella piped up.

“Bella,” Amanda sighed, pointing at Stockinette’s fibrous bounty. “We’re in the presence of beauty. Must you bring algebra into it?”

“Sorry, sweetie,” Bella said, giving Amanda’s shoulders a squeeze.

“Oh, you would love this place,” Tay scowled at Amanda. “It’s like they polled a thousand Amandas before they built it. It’s your Malibu Dream House.”

Amanda didn’t bother to drag her eyes off the yarn as she popped out an instant retort: “I can’t even care that you’re totally stereotyping me, as usual. This time, you’re right. This place is perrrrfect.”

“That’s exactly what it is. Perfect,” Scottie breathed. “Perfect, knitty goodness with frosting on top.”

Tay stomped to the front of their little cluster and stared her friends down.

“You guys,” she protested. “It’s completely pink! And it’s making Scottie channel CosmoGirl. ‘Knitty goodness with frosting on top?’”

“I’m serious,” Scottie protested. She pointed at the shop’s requisite Stitch ’n Bitch region in the center of the store. Within a quad of mod white loveseats and squishy chairs was a coffee table on which rested—in addition to a stack of Debbie Stoller tomes—a triple-tiered tray of mini-cupcakes.

With pretty lavender icing.

Tay gasped in horror.

“Cupcakes?!” she squeaked. “Wasn’t the pink enough?”

Scottie didn’t even try to stifle her snort of laughter.

“Just ignore the cupcakes,” she sighed. She gave Tay a push toward a little cluster of buckets stacked with just the kind of serviceable cotton yarn Tay loved. “Go over there. Find your yarn fizz.”

While Amanda and Bella went to hover over some fuzzy yarn, arrayed like so many scoops of ice cream in an antique baby bath, and Tay cruised the store with a purposeful scowl, Scottie plucked a cupcake from the tray. When she bit into it, the cake and frosting melted instantly in her mouth. It was little more than sweetened air.

Oh. Wow.

Scottie groaned with fresh-baked happiness, just as Tay tapped her on the shoulder with a springy skein of Risdie suede.

“Want some trendy with your trendy?” she asked.

Scottie almost dropped her cupcake as her eyes fell on the amber yarn.

“Risdie isn’t trendy, it’s gold!” she cried, grabbing the skein from Tay. “I read on that blog that they had it here but I didn’t believe it. Yes!”

With one hand, Scottie buried her fingers into the unspeakable, completely unnatural softness of the suede yarn. With the other hand, she gingerly maintained her grip on the Best. Cupcake. Ever. Tay raised one eyebrow at it.

“Whatever,” Scottie said. “So cupcakes are trendy. But I so don’t care and neither will you when you get a taste of this.”

She thrust her airy treat toward Tay’s mouth. “Try it!”

“No way am I eating a cupcake!” Tay scoffed. “Miniature food skeeves me out. It’s like playing with a dollhouse where everything’s shrunken.”

“And?” Scottie said.

“What do you mean?” Tay sputtered. “Am I the only one who thinks dollhouses are creepy? They’re worse than clowns.”

Tay tried to flicked the cupcake away from her—and ended up with a big dab of purple frosting on her fingertip.

Scottie giggled.

Tay rolled her eyes. She had no choice. She popped the stuff into her mouth. Her eyes went big and her lips twisted into a pucker that could only signify supreme pleasure.

“Oh, my God,” she swooned.

“Ha!” Scottie yelled triumphantly.

“You guys, c’mere!” she called to Amanda and Bella, who were still ogling their yarn. “The cupcakes have defeated even Tay. You’ve gotta have some. Oh, wait, Bella, you’re not vegan this week, are you?”

“No,” she sighed, looking guilty. “Ovo-lacto. Majorly ovo-lacto. This morning, I had an omelet. It was the best thing I’ve tasted since—”

“Since we went for ice cream two nights ago?” Scottie said.

“Oh, I forgot about that!” Bella’s eyes opened wide with guilt.

“Whatever,” Amanda said, scooping up a puff of melon-colored yarn. “Bella this is Manos del Uruguay. It’s made by this co-op of South American women. It’s PC and pretty. I’m sure it cancels out a few dairy products.”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it, B,” Tay said. Managing to curl her lip only a little bit, she picked up a cupcake and delivered it to Bella.

Amanda’s eyes went wide and questioning.

I know, Scottie thought, with a bewildered grin of her own. It’s like every day, Tay becomes a little less cactus-like. Who knows, maybe she’ll even consent to getting The Tattoo!

Scottie had hatched an idea a while back that the Chicks should get matching tattoos—a cute little ball of yarn and some sticks, etched onto each of their ankles.

So far all three of her friends had shot the idea down. Bella was terrified of needles and Amanda was terrified of the prolonged meltdown her parents would have if she ever came home with inked skin.

Tay had simply scoffed.

“A cute ball of yarn? That’s not a tattoo. This is a tattoo.”

She’d pointed at the black barbs that encircled her bicep and added, “And guess what, Shearer? This tattoo thing may be your idea, but I don’t think you’re ready for it. Beginning major rebellion at sixteen could give you the bends or something. Maybe you should start small. You could try, I don’t know, refusing to wear your safety goggles in chem class. Or being late to school more than once a year. Work up to the tattoo.”

“Hey,” Scottie had protested. “I rebel!”

“Dude,” Tay had said, “breaking curfew to buy yarn doesn’t count.”

Okay, so she was totally right, Scottie told herself now, glancing down at her still-bare ankle. I have a little issue with being bad. I even call my parents when I’m not gonna make curfew, because hello? Tay was right. I only break curfew for yarn or because I’m hanging with my girlfriends. It’s not like I have anything worth hiding, like Tay and Amanda do. I’ll never stay out ’til 2 doing . . . stuff with my boyfriend because my boyfriend exists only in my pathetic fantasies.

Scottie drifted to the Risdie table. It was a small round pedestal stacked with a wedding cake of yarn and stationed just next to the front desk, probably to prevent shoplifting.

Smart, Scottie thought. The stuff isn’t just expensive, it’s also impossible to find in Chicago.

She’d heard that the company purposely made tiny lots of its stock to feed yarnheads’ hunger. Knitting blogs murmured about a beanie baby-style conspiracy.

Yet here it was at Stockinette. Along with Manos del Uruguay, Lorna’s Laces, ArtYarns, and tons of homegrown handspun.

It really is perfect, Scottie thought. But even as she set out to choose a few precious skeins of Risdie, she sighed. It’s not KnitWit, though.

Just like the Chicks with Sticks, while perfectly devoted to Scottie, were not Scottie’s shaggy-haired, light-eyed dream boy.

The thing about perfect? Scottie thought. I keep thinking I’ve found it, but then it turns out I was wrong.

Just a couple weeks ago, for instance, Scottie thought she’d found the perfect shirt at H & M. It was cheap, but adorable, an eggplant, empire-waisted, wear-it-once-a-week revelation. It created the illusion of cleavage. It was made of whisper-soft cotton jersey. Scottie was in love.

And then I got it home and turns out, it’s got an unsnippable tag, Scottie thought. That thing scratched at me and rubbed at me until I wished I’d never found my perfect, eggplant shirt in the first place.

Perfect was bad, Scottie knew. Because perfection—or the perception of it, anyway—never lasted.

Will Scottie find her dream boy? Will Tay become a cupcake fiend? And what about that magical Risdie yarn? Read "Chicks with Sticks (Knit two together) TOMORROW to find out!

xoxo

Elizabeth

Comments

I LOVED chicks with sticks, the first and second book! People think knitting is grannyish, but its soo not! I started knitting yesterday and I'm already hooked. I just wish I had a group like scottie, having close friends knit together.

Posted by: Reba | August 08, 2007 at 03:55 PM

It's great to hear from you and see what you've been up to. In your blog I feel your enthusiasm for life. thank you.

Posted by: New Jordans | May 12, 2010 at 08:42 PM

He who would do well to another must do it in minute particulars; general good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer. What do you think?

Posted by: jordan 3 | July 31, 2010 at 05:52 AM

I loved all of the C w/s books! They were so good. And know I always love a good stich n' bitch with my grls! I hope there are more books from the author! :)

Posted by: Maria | August 15, 2010 at 09:47 PM

Is Risdie real? I've started knitting, and also started this book.

Posted by: Rachel | September 08, 2010 at 05:37 PM

There's an interesting gendering to that commercial, too. Men as soldiers, women as child care providers or as children. The latter is where the game language comes in. Will Clinton's strategy develop this further, feminizing people allegedly harmed by computer games?

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