Chapter 77: A Mountain of Hats

Al could not, for the life of him, follow my crochet instructions by hand. I wished I had a loom to teach him on; it would make my job a hundred times easier. Because there was no way I could accomplish all of this by myself.

Then it hit me. I may not have access to the plastic looms they sell in the craft aisle of chain stores but hadn't the original looms been made out of wood?

There was a small fleet of carpenters who worked in the castle. I found one of them and showed them a drawing of what I needed. It only took him two days to do it. He did such a good job that I had him make one for me as well.

Just because I knew how to crochet with my fingers doesn't mean it was the most effective way to do things. With a loom, I could make an adult sized hat in an hour.

Al was a bit slower than me but we still spent most of our free time holed up in our quarters making hats so progress was steady. We soon had a small mountain of them in the corner of our bedroom. When our hands got too sore, we would revert to our usual activities like reading, cards, or horseback riding.

I tried visiting Mariela as much as I could to help her break up the monotony of being stuck in bed. I would crochet as I talked to her. Sometimes Al came with me but whenever he did he spent the entire time glaring at his brother.

It annoyed me—how childish could he get?—but I didn't confront him about it. Whatever made him feel better. As a person with a happy family growing up, I had no room to judge him.

"Do you think we have enough yet?" Al asked one day over a month into our hat-making venture.

He didn't know how to make scarves so once he got faster at making hats I started focusing on those exclusively. Right now we had approximately 77 hats and 23 scarves. Surprisingly, scarves only took about an hour longer than hats to do.

"We should have one hundred hats and fifty scarves," I said after eyeballing the piles.

It would be easier to rent out a booth and try to sell everything in the span of a few days than it would be to keep a steady business running. We couldn't get away with sneaking out all the time, especially once the nobles began arriving for the spring court session.

We were running out of time.

"Remind me how much you intend on selling these for."

"Two coppers for the hats, three for the scarves," I said with a shrug.

I had checked the average market prices from multiple clothing vendors. Hats normally cost about four copper pieces while scarves, which required more yarn, were about six. If I sold them for half the usual price they would likely sell like wildfire.

In this world, twenty copper pieces equals one silver piece and ten silver pieces equals a gold piece. I did the math on a bit of spare parchment; if we managed to sell everything we would earn one gold piece, seven silver pieces, and ten copper pieces all together.

That didn't sound like much, but for reference, an average peasant family in Annalaias lived off of about eight silver pieces a year. They were simple people who labored largely in exchange for their living quarters and land to grow their own crops as well.

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Most of their money went towards raw materials they couldn't create themselves to make their own household goods. They often performed backbreaking work for the nobility and barely made enough to get by.

They were too overworked to riot now but if Sigmund chipped away at their rights even further…the nation would be thrown into a state of chaos. They needed representatives in the court to negotiate for a better way to provide for themselves.

Al sighed. "My plan makes money much faster. And doesn't make our hands sore."

He had lessened his coin snitching after I nagged him too often but didn't stop completely. It was a compromise we reached. If he was going to keep doing it the least he could do was make it less obvious.

"At least this gives us something to do. Would you really rather have played another thousand games of Go Fish?"

I had played so many games of cards since moving into this palace that I would be happy if I never saw a deck of cards again. Unfortunately, Al loved them and it wasn't like there was much else to do.

It was times like this that I really missed TV. I could have binged every single show on Netflix in the time I've lazed about the palace. If this world had technology, I was willing to bet Al would have become one of those people who literally never gets up from the couch because they're always watching something.

I put the scarf I was working on and stretched. This was tiring, time consuming work. I could practically feel my brain screaming for something more stimulating. Where was a good Sudoku puzzle or crossword when you needed one?

Actually…I could probably make a Sudoku puzzle of my own. All I would have to do is draw the boxes. I would have to remember that for later. We could spend hours on that too once all these hats were done.

Realizing there were things from home that could translate over here was always a happy occurrence. I was so desperate for my world that I would take anything I could get.

I had been working sprawled out on one couch while Al was on another. I crossed over to where he was and parked myself on his lap. He looked up at me in surprise; this wasn't something I did often.

"What are you doing?"

"I need a break. Entertain me."

I kissed the corner of his lips so he got my meaning. Mindlessly making out for a while would be better than mindlessly crocheting. He had gotten to be a pretty good kisser.

A certain gleam appeared in his eyes and he abandoned his loom to grant my request immediately. Ah, it could be nice to have a husband.

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