Tali Mullins
Stories (20/0)
It's Not That Hard
I looked up when Chris came in with one of his knitting bags and settled on the bed next to me. “What now?” I grumbled, shifting as his weight unbalanced me. I was trying to get comfortable but being this pregnant meant I was never comfortable. And I was always hot.
By Tali Mullins3 years ago in Fiction
The Beauty of Cross-Stitch
The women in my family have always done some kind of fiber craft, whether knitting or cross-stitch or quilting or sewing. They weren’t always good at it; there is an infamous pink knitted dress with a defect across the middle that my grandmother made for my mom that attests to this. Grandma always shrugged it off and said, “That’s how you know it’s homemade.” But they always kept doing it. They weren’t always made to be pretty, but rather to be practical. They were pretty, because if you were going to put the time in, you might as well make it nice to look at. The quilts and blankets made by my foremothers were made to keep families warm in the harsh Illinois winters. The clothes were made because they didn’t have the money to buy store-bought clothes. My grandmother sewed both her daughters’ wedding dresses because there wasn’t money to buy a dress. I later wore my mother’s dress, both as a way to save money for my own wedding and as a way to honor my mother and grandmother and have my grandmother, who had died, at my wedding.
By Tali Mullins3 years ago in Journal
Daddy's Favorite
My father’s favorite cake was German chocolate. Not devil’s food, not red velvet, not double chocolate, not regular chocolate. German chocolate. And not the kind you buy in a grocery store, where they take a regular chocolate cake and slap coconut pecan frosting on it and call it a German chocolate cake. There’s something special in the German chocolate cake that takes extra work, extra care. The cocoa is different. But German chocolate cake has been so altered by so many bakeries and mixes, a lot of people don’t know, or care. But Dad did.
By Tali Mullins3 years ago in Fiction
Shelter
The snow was coming from all directions and Frederick needed to find shelter quickly. The cart didn’t have anything to shield them, and Rebecca and James were nearly frozen through. He scanned helplessly around, looking as best he could, when he finally spotted what he hoped was a cottage set off in the woods a bit.
By Tali Mullins3 years ago in Fiction
Lucky Break
The last thing to come down would be the old barn, with its years of dust and hay, the smells of animals and farm equipment steeped into the grain of the old boards that had turned gray with time and weather. The sunlight pierced through the cracks in the roof and the sides, where birds would occasionally swoop in, building their nests in the rafters.
By Tali Mullins3 years ago in Fiction