Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 by Paula Goodlett, edited by Paula Goodlett Page B

that kudzu-covered shed, when nobody else did."
    The "half-bed" was narrow and uncomfortable, but that wasn't why Tilda had trouble falling asleep that night. She'd been given so much to think about.
    Across the street from "Ich ♥ Meine Higgins"
    Deborah, SoTF
    Saturday morning, May 10, 1636
    Tilda knew the store was built post-ROF, because it had a bunch of little windows facing the street, instead of one big window. Painted in letters big enough to need several windows was "WE HAVE ZIPPERS!"
    Herr Miller had worn a "jacket" with a zipper in it when he'd gone out to fetch the newspaper that morning, so Tilda knew what a zipper was. It was indeed a good thing that the metal miracles were being sold in her century, Tilda decided.
    Tilda crossed the street and opened the store's front door. A fist-sized bell that was mounted at the inside top of the door, rang then.
    The next thing to hit Tilda's senses was the colors! She saw bolts of wool and linen cloth, in an eyeball-shock of colors. Not only was there cloth in solid colors that Tilda had never seen before, but she also saw gingham and plaid cloth made by weaving dyed threads. By a sign, "For Sonny," she saw a bolt of white linen that had blue airplanes printed on it. By another sign, "Girl Camouflage," was a bolt of linen that was tie-dyed in a bright pink that Tilda had never expected to see in cloth.
    "Good morning, I'm Katharina Heller, the owner. May I help you?" a woman asked Tilda. Her calf-length skirt and her unaccented German told Tilda that Katharina was another down-timer, but her down-time-patterned blouse was made of green gingham. Oddly, the blouse's sleeves were sewn to the doublet, instead of being detachable.
    Tilda replied, "Yes, I hope you can help me. I just arrived in town yesterday, along with my own sewing machine. I'm told you match people who need sewing, up with freelance seamstresses and tailors? I'm a tailor's widow."
    "You got here yesterday? That's a problem. Do you know how to sew buttons and buttonholes?"
    "Um . . . no. I'm not even sure what a 'buttonhole' is. The Higgins manual talks about them, but we didn't understand that part."
    Katharina went behind the counter, and then brought forth the Higgins manual, an up-time woman's blouse, a scrap of cloth, and three wood disks, each with two holes drilled in them. She then walked Tilda over to the chained-down Higgins machine in the store, and explained for fifteen minutes how to sew on buttons, which was easy, and make buttonholes, which was much more tricky.
    ". . . never done it before, I suggest you buy a yard of cloth and some buttons, and practice making buttonholes. We have wood buttons and new-time plastic buttons, but since this is practice, buy the wood buttons. Made from wood growing inside the Ring of Fire, they're much cheaper. Up-timers prefer the 'disk' shape—what I'm using now—but mushroom-shape buttons are cheapest of all."
    Tilda went to the bin marked "Scrap cloth—prices as marked," chose a half-yard of orange linen, and was in the process of paying for it (plus four wood buttons) when the store's front-door bell rang.
    "Good morning," a woman's voice said in American-accented German.
    "I'll be with you in a minute, Frau Up-timer," Katharina said.
    "Wow, I haven't been to a place like this in centuries," the up-timer woman murmured behind Tilda's back. Then she laughed. "Literally."
    Seconds later, Tilda had finished her purchase, and had turned around to leave. She gasped when she saw the newcomer for the first time. "You're Stephanie Turski!"
    "Who?" Katharina asked.
    "She found sixteen yards of blue-jeans cloth in her house," Tilda explained. "She was on television news last night."
    "Funny you should mention that, liebchen ," Stephanie said, walking up to the counter. She opened her purse, stuck her hand in, and came out holding a lot of dark-blue five-inch cloth squares.
    "These are for decoration," Stephanie said, sliding them across the counter to