Effie had found a haberdasher's stall, and was delightedly looking through skeins of thread. Cotton and linen and silk...her pennies wouldn't stretch enough for silk thread, and there was no point to buying thread ready-dyed. But that cotton thread that looked fine enough to be spider's silk, so smooth...she lifted it carefully from the tray, holding it up to the sun to check the evenness of the thread.