At the third quarter of the Mao hour in the East Market weaving workshop, the clicking of the looms was three parts faster than usual. Boss Pei tapped her ivory comb against the carved railing, her gold hairpins cutting a cold arc in the morning light: "Yifan, you must dye Shu Brocade in indigo? Aren't you afraid of ruining my gold-lettered signboard?"
Zhang Yifan's abacus beads bounced among the weft threads of the loom, the indigo-dyed abacus cord complementing the gold threads of the Shu Brocade: "Does Boss Pei know that Persian merchants have been rushing to snap up 'landscape pattern' brocade?" He suddenly pointed at the "weaving-guardian demon face" Huwa had just carved. The little fellow was holding an abacus bead like a shuttle, its abacus bead eyes fixed on the loom's jacquard board: "We use indigo to dye the distant mountains, and then gold thread to weave the flowing water, which will surely make high-born ladies fight tooth and nail for it."
Moli touched the plain silk on the desk, on which she had spent the night sketching the draft of Autumn Mountain Painting. The distant peaks were rendered in indigo, and the nearby ripples of water were outlined with gold threads: "Sister Hongxiu, if this pattern is woven, it will have much more charm than a simple Twin Lotus." Huwa immediately carved a little fellow holding a wolf-hair brush on the edge of the plain silk, an abacus bead tongue licking the two characters for "charm."
Chapter 97