"Skein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into short threads, never more than half the length of the skein. If a long needleful is used, it is not only apt to pull the work, but is very wasteful, as the end of it is liable to become frayed or knotted before it is nearly worked up. If it is necessary to use it double (and for coarse ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... them, Bolles looked seriously at Dean Drake; but that youth wore an expression of rising merriment. Bolles looked back at the dusk from which the yells were sounding, then forward to the spreading skein of night where the trail was taking him and the boy, and in neither direction could he discern cause ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... of the Queen upon Charles is the last strand in this tangled skein of human destiny brought out by Browning in the scene. The Parliament that Wentworth wants she is afraid of lest it should ask for a renewal of the persecution of the Catholics. The vacillating Charles, in an instant, is ready to repudiate his interview with ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... heart and brain. Passion hath made me restless and longing consumes my soul And tears discover the secret that else concealed had lain. I know of no way to ease me of sickness and care and woe, Nor can my weak endeavour reknit love's severed skein. The fire of my heart with yearnings and longing grief is fed And for its heat, the lover to live in hell is fain. O thou that thinkest to blame me for what betides me, enough; God knows I suffer with patience whate'er He doth ordain. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... enough hail to hurt anything; that the straw will straighten up again, and that this downpour was just what he wanted. Early in the afternoon, on looking out the shack door, I saw a tangle of clouds on the sky-line. They seemed twisted up like a skein of wool a kitten had been playing with. Then they seemed to marshal themselves into one solid line and sweep up over the sky, getting blacker and blacker as they came. Olga ran in with her yellow hair flying, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast, a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled some few yards further along the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the flood." "And it carried off the eggs too, I suppose?" "No; I have eggs." We resolved to sup on eggs. A fire of logs was kindled up stairs, and a table was extemporized out of some deals. In a quarter of an hour in came our supper,—black bread, fried eggs, and a skein of wine. We fell to; but, alack! what from the smut of the chimney and the dust of the pan, the eggs were done in the chiaro scuro style; the wine had so villanous a twang, that a few sips of it contented me; and the bread, black as it was, was the only thing ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... development of the situation between the child and his mother. He had been obliged to go into town the day after Eleanor's first unfortunate encounter with her hostess, and had hurried home in fear and trembling to try to smooth out any tangles in the skein of their relationship that might have resulted from a day in each other's vicinity. After hurrying over the house and through the grounds in search of her he finally discovered the child companionably currying ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... and which possesses the power of combining with the dyestuff and thus forming an insoluble compound upon the fiber. Cotton is dyed in an unspun state, and also as yarn or spun thread, either in the hank or skein. Silk is dyed in unspun skeins, although to a considerable extent it is also dyed ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... feared the loss of employment through its means, that they pelted him with stones and had nearly killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or skein of an ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... top of the 'bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. "Conservation of energy," you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me streams out In a vanishing skein of grey. Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! I am a harp of twittering strings, An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, And if I have not got phthisis it is only an ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... happened, then, some months before, that Bashley being away for a day's holiday, Antoine took his place at the scale; for it was a slack time, and few workpeople were there to be served. He believed he had given out the last skein of silk, and had weighed the last bobbin, so shutting the slide, and putting up the bar, he unlocked an inner door, and went into the house and up the stairs. Pausing on the first landing, as he frequently did, to look thoughtfully over the balustrade and down the well-staircase, he ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the easiest thing I have been set to do,' thought the girl, who was a good spinner. But when she began she found that the skein tangled ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... silver, every day, Dies to gray. There are knots in every skein. Hours of work and hours of play Fade away Into one immense Inane. Shadow and substance, chaff and grain, Are as vain As the foam or as the spray. Life goes crooning, faint and fain, One refrain: 'If it ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... dwelling, the housewife's handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight. Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—-her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow form of New Brunswick matrons; her dress is home-spun, of her own manufacture, carded and spun ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations 'enabling him or her to know themselves.' Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, 'growing lads of five feet eleven' ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... knots or lays were of forty threads, and twenty lays made a skein or slipping. The number varied, however, with locality. To spin two skeins of linen thread was a good day's work; for it a spinner was paid eight cents a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... that they were lovers; especially if he marked the calm and well-pleased smile that stole from time to time across the proud features of that patrician lady; who, sitting but a little way apart, watched—while she reeled off skein after skein of the fine Byssine flax in silence—the quiet happiness of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of that, Hal, an thou lovest me,"' said Pleydell. 'But we must have some news from the land of Egypt, if possible. O, if I had but hold of the slightest thread of this complicated skein, you should see how I would unravel it! I would work the truth out of your Bohemian, as the French call them, better than a monitoire or a plainte de Tournelle; I know how to manage a ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... eager and excited over the last stages of the journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new, unknown and untried. They hardly could wait to resume their following out of the last entangled skein of the great narrative. ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... are more superstitious than any one else. Hanging to her neck by a skein of plaited horse-hair was the polished shell of a minute turtle—smaller than ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt, but she wasna a ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and Henry James alone, who unravels for us the tangled skein of our actual normal-abnormal life, as the destinies twist and knot it in the civilised ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... your chance to work here," laughed his uncle. "There is variety enough to please you, too. We have throwing mills; a place where we dye silk in the skein; a winding and weaving plant; another plant for dyeing goods in the piece; and a big printing and finishing plant. If you do not find something to suit you by the time you have worked through all these it will be your own fault. Of course ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... the man formed by Hephaestus, because a little door had not been left in his breast, so as to enable his fellows to look into his secret thoughts." (See Lucian's Hermotimus, cap. xx.) There was a proverb, [Greek: To| Mo/mo| a)re/skein] Momo santisfacere; vide Adagia Variorum, 1643, p. 58. Byron describes Suwarrow as "Now Mars, now Momus" (Don Juan, Canto ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... part played by Mr. Simon Rattar in unravelling the dark skein, or at least in trying to, was naturally described at some length, and Mr. Carrington showed his usual sympathetic, and, one might almost say, entranced appreciation of the many facts told him concerning ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... said she. "Three yards more would finish, and now I shall have to go down to the village and buy a whole skein, just for that." ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... moments there was something so absent and distracted about her, or so fantastic and incoherent, that Vaudemont, with the man's hard, worldly eye, read in it nothing but melancholy confusion. Nevertheless, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in itself was a thread ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... started, all with the same air of weary disgust. Her voice, a childishly sweet soprano, mingled with the robust baritone of the doctor and the shouting tenor of the fat man, like a thread of silver in a skein of brass. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... keep the boy employed, the good woman had borrowed a reel of a neighbor, and set him to work winding thread. The contrivance greatly delighted him. He examined it with the utmost care, pushing it up and down, to fit it for a larger or smaller skein, much to the amusement ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... from one dirty staircase to another, in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to a passer-by. Porters even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and in Moscow much more so; no one answered Bersenyev's call; only an inquisitive tailor, in his shirt sleeves, with a skein of grey thread on his shoulder, thrust out from a high casement window a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with a blackened eye; and a black and hornless goat, clambering up on to a dung heap, turned round, bleated plaintively, and went on chewing the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... got back he looked as though he had been born and bred in the steading. He sat in the big wooden-armed ingle-chair, with the black cat on his knee. His arms were out, and he held a skein of worsted from hand to hand which my mother was busily rolling into a ball. Cousin Edie was sitting near, and I could see by her eyes that she ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Heaven, till she had recovered this other half, which was now held fast in the deep water. Anne Lisbeth got back to her former home, but was no longer the woman she had been: her thoughts were confused like a tangled skein; only one thread, only one thought she had disentangled, namely, that she must carry the spectre of the sea shore to the churchyard, and dig a grave for him, that thus she might ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... early days of my childhood candy appealed to me more than anything else, as never having had a surfeit of sweets, candy to me was a rare treat. I remember, Mary, when a little child, my thrifty mother, wishing to encourage me to learn to knit my own stockings, she, when winding the skein of German yarn into a ball, occasionally wound a penny in with the yarn. I was allowed to spend the penny only after I had knitted the yarn and the penny had fallen from the ball. What untold wealth that penny represented! ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... O'Conor's order to his men, in his combat with the sons of Roderick at Drumraitte (1237), "not to shoot but to come to a close fight." It is possible, however, that this order may have reference to the old Irish weapon, the javelin or dart. The pike, the battle-axe, the sword, and skein, or dagger, both parties had in common, though their construction was different. The favourite tactique, on both sides, seems to have been the old military expedient of outflanking an enemy, and attacking ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... moustache, sandier even than his hair, giving effect to every freckle on his honest face. A little behind was Mary, winding one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It cut "more often" short. It is probable, that had it not been for this, the prioress and Fauchelevent would never have unravelled that skein. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... tangled skein," Geoffrey said, "and you must follow me carefully. First, with a piece of chalk I will draw upon the wall the pedigree of the royal line of France from Phillip downwards, and then you will see how it is that our King Edward and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant in ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Lizzie Gordon, who was seated at the window winding up a ball of worsted, the skein of which was being held by Miss Puff, who was at that time ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... touched her brown hair and her quiet, pale face. She was one of those women who are never afraid of the light. Her face was of that strange, self-contained nature, colorless, apparently, yet capable of strange and rapid changes. Just now the last glow of sunlight seemed to have found a skein of gold in her hair, a queer gleam of light in her eyes. She stood there looking at the man whom ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spin and weave, but I cannot see Just how 'tis done, and it puzzles me. For you have no loom In your little room. No silken skein, no spinning-wheel, No bobbin and ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... the story bears a certain similarity to that of Mysterier, Vicioria, and Pan, being a love affair of mazy windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with Elsie Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education or social standing. He is a cheerful, riotous "blade," who sports with the girls of the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... for your dinner. On such occasions I would recommend the following method:—First, draw the fowl, reserving the gizzard and liver to be tucked under the wings; truss the fowl with skewers, and tie it to the end of a skein of worsted, which is to be fastened to a nail stuck in the chimney-piece, so that the fowl may dangle rather close to the fire, in order to roast it. Baste the fowl, while it is being roasted, with butter, or some kind of grease, and when nearly done, sprinkle it with a little ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... continue to intone in concert a strange chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies away to give ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... jades. They delight in playing ill-natured pranks upon us. Not content with spinning and measuring and cutting the threads of our lives to suit themselves, they must also tangle the skein, causing us to cut capers ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... understand it all by-and-bye," observed the maniac; "but it will be necessary that you wait until I have finished the story, when it will all reel off like a skein of silk, which at present ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... application—yes, application, with hard, earnest study as a relative concomitant, which solved the problem. This was the beginning, an auspicious one, you must admit, because, having unraveled the chief skein of difficulty, it seemed to imbue us with increased confidence, and study we did, with intense fervor and earnestness. Thus it continued. Not a careless and desultory endeavor, but one of energetic ...
— Silver Links • Various
... for spending money. First he exchanged a few cents for a tin pan to be filled with water and placed on top of the stove, for the comfort of Virginia who had been oppressed by the dry heat. Then a few cents more went for two buttons his coat lacked, a skein of thread to sew them on with, and a skein of silk with which Virginia would mend a rent in his trousers made by too close contact with a nail on deck of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Louisa wanted to wind a skein of silk, and in looking for a piece of paper to wind it upon she opened her writing-box, and took out Mrs. Arden's note. Sophy knew it again in an instant from its three-cornered shape. She saw her sister tear the note in ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... had already chosen their wives; so they took the flax from their mother, and carried it off with them, to have it spun as she had said. But the youngest son was puzzled what to do with his skein, as he knew no girl (never having spoken to any) to whom he could give it to be spun. He wandered hither and thither, asking the girls that he met if they would undertake the task for him, but at the sight of the flax they laughed in his face and mocked at him. Then in despair he left their ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... came, like the moan of the breeze brought from an infinite distance, like mutterings and groanings arisen from the very bowels of the earth. Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... chances for humor, particularly the funny story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial. But do not spin a whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and threadbare "And that reminds me." An anecdote without bearing may be funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable. There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to the heart of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the Silvia written by one Fileno, which, like the Amaranta, turns on the temporary estrangement of two lovers, introduces considerable elements from the rustic performances; in Cazza's Erbusto the amorous skein is cut by the discovery of consanguinity and an [Greek: a)nagno/risis] after the manner of the Latin comedy. Similar in plot to this last is a fragmentary pastoral of Giraldi Cintio's published from manuscript by Signor Carducci. Another curious but isolated experiment ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... slide, and get their legs over the traces, and are dragged up against the rocks; carriage, horses, harness, all a confused heap. The Brave, and I, and the postilion, were constantly at work, in extricating the whole concern from a tangle, like a skein of thread. We broke two thick iron chains, and crushed the box of a wheel, as it was; and the carriage is now undergoing repair, under the window, on the margin of the lake: where a woman in short petticoats, a stomacher, and two immensely ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a very high order. There was no counter in front, only some tables on which lay strewn fancy boxes of thread and other useless knick-knacks to which certain shopkeepers appear to cling though they can seldom find customers for them. A woman stood at one of these tables untangling a skein of red yarn. Behind her I saw another leaning in an abstracted way over a counter which ran from wall to wall across the extreme end of the shop. This I took to be Bess. She had made no move at my entrance and she made no move now. The woman ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... skein of silk she wanted for her work was not in her basket. She turned to look also in her old inlaid workbox, which stood on a small table beside her. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... propriety. There was the old lady who did nothing but knit. She had arrived in a fly, knitting. She was knitting now, between the courses. When she caught sight of the Lucys she smiled at them over her knitting. They had found her, before dinner, with her feet entangled in a skein of worsted. Jane had shown tenderness ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the most part; though he ravelled some P. W. D. accounts into the same skein of thought. He talked, and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of control at once, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... did foes more deadly wait Than Saladin's fierce crew. The lamp of love Was changed for one of hate, which threw Its false and fatal skein of light above. A shuddering shock, a fearful crash, foretold the ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... not at all," said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his disquisition"the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... imperative that in trotting about the neighbourhood she must trot alone or else not at all. Usage soon rendered this perfectly natural to herself. Her father, who had had other experiences, did not much like the idea of a Swancourt, whose pedigree could be as distinctly traced as a thread in a skein of silk, scampering over the hills like a farmer's daughter, even though he could habitually neglect her. But what with his not being able to afford her a regular attendant, and his inveterate habit of letting anything be to save himself trouble, the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... rolled from her funnels in a twisted skein. What had once been ore in many a mine, and trees in many a forest, had become an individual, as what has been vegetables and fruits and the flesh of animals becomes at last a child with a soul, a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... for to make people sympathise with virtue is a vulgar trick that any common fellow can do; but it is not everybody who can take a scoundrel, and cause us to weep and whimper over him as though he were a very saint. Give a young lady of five years old a skein of silk and a brace of netting-needles, and she will in a short time turn you out a decent silk purse—anybody can; but try her with a sow's ear, and see whether she can make a silk purse out of THAT. That is the work for your real great artist; and pleasant it is to see how many ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a skein of silk, 'The ravelled sleave of care', usually misinterpreted, the equivocal ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... attaches said, at the Cafe Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this season, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... not surprising that the ancients gave up the exploration of the Nile when they came to the countless windings and difficulties of the marshes; the river is like an entangled skein of thread. Wind light; course S. 20 degrees W. The strong north wind that took us from Khartoum has long since become a mere breath. It never blows in this latitude regularly from the north. The wind commences at between 8 and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... himself,—she had enticed him on in a thousand ways,—most especially by the amazing "grip" she had of scientific problems in which he was interested and which puzzled him, but which she seemed to unravel as easily as she might unravel a skein of wool. Her clear brightness of brain and logical precision of argument first surprised him into unqualified admiration, calling to his mind the assertion of a renowned physiologist that "From the beginning woman had lived in ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... wash; still, as you are never sure of getting the best, it is well to unwind your skeins, pour scalding water on the wools, and rinse them well in it, squeeze out the water, shake the wools thoroughly, and hang them up. When dry, cut the skein across where it is tied double, and with a bodkin and string, or with a long hair-pin, draw the crewel into its case. This case (see Fig. 1) is made by folding together a long piece of thin cotton cloth a foot wide, and running parallel lines across its width half an inch or so apart. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be mercerized either in the yarn, warp, skein, or in the piece, the first being more effective. The best and most satisfactory results are achieved when the material treated is made of fine long staple cotton, either Sea Island or Egyptian, the shorter cottons being relatively much less improved ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... a white background in a good light. Select, as a test color, a skein of light green color, such as would be obtained by mixing a pure green with white. Ask the examinee to select and pick out from the heap all those skeins which appear to him to be of the same color, whether of lighter or darker shades. A color-blind person will select amongst others ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... school, and he is a school in himself. That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped him is merely to say that he is not constituted a contemplative philosopher. The sinister skein to be seen in some of his canvases does not argue the existence of a spiritual bias but is the recognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... care heir obey weight bare their prey freight fare there weigh neigh hair where sleigh veins fair stair reign whey chair pear skein rein pair ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... Migul lay prone on its back. A small door-porte in its metal side was open; the panel hung awry on hinges half ripped away. From the aperture a coil and grid dangled half out in the midst of a tangled skein of wires. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... with a brass or iron arm, turning on pivots in a plate fastened to the lintel, and notched along its upper edge. From this arm, which is turned back against the lintel when not in use, the meat is hung and turned by means of a bottle-jack or a skein of worsted, knotted in three or four places, which answers the purpose equally well, and may be replaced by a new one when required, at a merely nominal cost. Meat roasted in this manner should be turned occasionally, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... supposition—putting two and two together, don't you know, and hoping they will stick. But, in any event, we must not let any chance slip by. If he is interested, we must bring him to time. It may mean the unravelling of the whole skein, dear. Don't look so distressed. Be brave. It doesn't matter what we learn in the end, I love you just the same. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are animals ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... royal antagonist in the industrious subtlety with which he began to form a thousand combinations. Swift, secret, incapable of fatigue, this powerful and patient intellect sped to and fro, disentangling the perplexed skein where all had seemed so hopelessly confused, and gradually unfolding broad schemes of a symmetrical and regenerated polity. He had high correspondents and higher hopes in England. He was already secretly or openly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gone, he spoke at Jacob: "Perished you are now, Shacob. You have unraveled the tangled skein of eternal life. Pray I do you will find rest with the restless of big London. Annie and Jane fach, sorrowful you are; wet are your tears. Go you and drink a nice cup of tea in the cafe. Most eloquent I shall be in a minute and there's hysterics you'll get. ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... very amusing, and you may be useful if you like, very;' and she offered him a skein of silk, which ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... tangled skein of politics and party principles. This Boer farmer was a very typical character, and represented to my mind all that was best and noblest in the African Dutch character. Supposing he had been conducting Mr. Morley to Pretoria, not as a prisoner ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... sense of colour, a picture on which various colours are painted is placed before the patient, as well as a skein of wool of the same shade as one of the colours in the picture, which he is ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... observer's parapet, they paused a moment and faced each other in closer speech. This interchange of words, though brief in measure of time, lasted long enough to add a vivid strand to Mrs. Ansell's thickening skein; then, on a gesture of the lady's, and without signs of formal leave-taking, the young man struck into a path which regained the entrance avenue, while his companion, quickening her pace, crossed ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... way. It was jus' as clear, to look through, but it was another case altogether, no more like the other one than a apple-pie is like a mug o' cider. An' then they both took it up, an' they swung it around between them, till it was all twisted an' knotted an' wound up, an' tangled, worse than a skein o' yarn in a nest o' kittens, an' then they give ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... any tribes but those of Asia Minor and the AEgean. In them we see the broken remnants of the old Minoan (Keftian) power, driven hither and thither across the seas by intestinal feuds, and "winding the skein of grievous wars till every man of them perished," as Homer says of the heroes after the siege of Troy. These were in fact the wanderings of the heroes, the period of Sturm und Drang which succeeded the great civilized epoch of Minos and his thalassocracy, of Knossos, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... eyes jeering. "You operate? Do you think that they want you to cut a skein of silk with a pair of scissors? Cut off a man's arm . . . how far would you ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... out on the 28th January 1547, when the tyrant breathed his last, and left his two wives and two daughters to unravel the skein which he had so persistently entangled for them. Katharine Parr took her fate immediately into her own hands, and thirty-five days after Henry's death, secretly married her former admirer, Sir Thomas, now Lord Seymour, who was described by Hayward as "fierce in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park she perceived the tangled skein of life was now to be further complicated by his ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the gate long skein When 'tis tangled and askew; Never wanting to compain[A]— This can 'ittle ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... the chief stock-in-trade of the writer of fiction, to depict the misunderstandings which arise between two persons, through the sin of one, or the folly of both, or the villainy of a third; then comes the means by which the tangled skein is unravelled, and in the end everything is satisfactorily explained, and the sorely-tried characters are ushered into a happiness stronger and sweeter than ever before. Friends quarrel, and are miserable in their state of separation; and afterward, when the friendship ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... she trod so far in the fatal footsteps of her ancestress, Mary Stuart. She had none of her rash violence, but not a little of her spirit of romantic intrigue, and that feminine delight of having in hand a tangled skein, of which she held securely ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... opening his eyes was, "I am in the land of the lions!" And—well, why should we not say it?—at the idea that lions were nigh hereabouts, within a couple of steps, almost at hand's reach, and that he would have to disentangle a snarled skein with them, ugh! a deadly chill struck him, and he dived intrepidly under ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... without a queer feeling in my throat; for it was there that the results of the duchess' indiscretion finally worked themselves out to their unexpected, fatal, and momentous ending. Seldom, as I should suppose, has such a mixed skein of good and evil, of fatality and happiness, been spun from material no more substantial than ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... a mortal like the barbarians, for you have been a force ruling the sea, and the flowers, and the winds, and twisting the blood of man and woman in your fingers like a living skein of soft red silk. They will always worship you. It may not be in temples any longer, not with a studied liturgy, but wherever the sap rises in a flower, or the joy of life swims up in the morning through the broken film of dreams, or a young man perceives for the first ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... might have been, Of all the sorrow that his sword had wrought, Of Death that now drew near him: of the green Vales of Larissa, where, with such a queen, With such a love as now his spear had slain, He had been happy, who must wind the skein Of grievous wars, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... the invariable royal manner. There were also several broken tumblers, some filled with sugar-plums, some with marbles; there were, moreover, cakes of various kinds, and barley sugar, and Holland dolls, and wooden horses, with here and there gilt-covered picture-books, and now and then a skein of thread, or a dangling pound of candles. At the door of the house sat the good old dame's cat, a decent demure-looking personage, that seemed to scan every body that passed, to criticise their dress, and now and then to stretch her neck, and look out with sudden curiosity, to see what ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... was I speaking of? Again I am lost in a maze of reflections. Forgive me, dear Mother, for wandering thus. My story is like a tangled skein, but I fear I can do no better. I write my thoughts as they come; I fish at random in the stream of my heart, and offer you all ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Why, you dear woman, if you had stayed away five minutes longer I should have gone for you myself. What! Another skein of yarn?" ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... skein of yarn for Aunt Lois; and she went on winding in silence, putting the ball through loops ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... may find another like her." Strange, when I come to think of it! It seems to me that I do not want another like Aniela, or a better one either,—I want her. I say it seems to me; for it is a feeling without any definite shape. I carry within me something like an entangled skein; I weary myself, and yet am not able to reduce it to any kind of order. In spite of all my self-knowledge, I cannot quite make out what it is that makes me feel sad. Is it because I find I love her, or is it because I feel I could love her very much? Sniatynski unconsciously ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... not hinder them nor see what only husbands are permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit in the dining-room and converse with Pimenovna, one of the poor relations. Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by me with a thimble, a skein of wool or some other ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... always the sting of that fact. Miss Granger was rarely absent for ten minutes together on these occasions; it was only some lucky chance which took her from the room to fetch some Berlin wool, or a forgotten skein of floss silk for the perennial spaniels, and afforded the brother and sister an opportunity for a few hurried words. The model villagers almost faded out of Miss Granger's mind in this agreeable society. She found herself listening to talk about things which were of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... there, you have tangled my hair. How provoking you are! It will take me an hour to put it right. You are not satisfied with being a prodigy of impiety, but you must also tangle my hair. Come, hold out your hands and take this skein ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... rose and still the rapture Woven through the tangled skein, And the joys we still shall capture At the turning ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... was apace, And soon, from every corner place The girls came with the skein of their own making To wind up at ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... of East Greenwich fixed prices at that time at rates which seem purely arbitrary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus for spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins to the pound, the price was not to exceed sixpence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer work in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was the same per skein. Weaving plain flannel or tow or linen brought fivepence per yard; common worsted and linen, one penny a yard; and other ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... wish you could have seen the eggs and the great dishes of meat. Sis is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any, and had no night-sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... uselessness of the habit. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a customer? Did they ever collect a bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop a twinge of the gout? Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any great enterprise? or enable you ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... had left, we took to the caravel Nina, to which from another headland there was coming another little almadia, with a man who came to barter a skein of cotton. And some of the sailors threw themselves into the sea, because he did not wish to enter the caravel, and took him. And I, who was on the stern of the ship, and saw it all, sent for him and gave him a red cap and some little green glass beads which I put on his arm, ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy, like the names of young royal princes, such as the starboard-main-top- gallant-bow-line, or ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... yard? | unu jardo? | pohr oo'noo yahr'doh? This will do | Tio cxi tauxgos | tee'oh chee tahw'gohss I will take this | Mi tion prenos | mee tee'ohn preh'nohss A reel of cotton | Unu bobeno da kotono | oonoo bo-beh'no dah | | ko-toh'no A skein | Fadenaro | fahdeh-nah'ro A packet of mixed | Paketo da miksitaj | pahkeh'toh dah pins | pingloj | miksee'tahy peen'gloy Not so fine | Ne tiel delikata | neh tee'ehl | | dehleekah'tah Show me some ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... hear the clatter round the tea-table, the witless jests of the youngsters, the careless laughter of the women, the trivial, merry nonsense that was weaving another hour of happiness into the golden skein of happy hours. Contemptible, of course! Vanity of vanities! But how infinitely precious is even such vanity as this to those who ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... to commence. The undulating horizon rendered it difficult to ascertain the precise moment of his fall. The crimson orb sunk below the purple mountains, the sky was flushed with a rich and rosy glow. Then might be perceived the zealots, proud in their Talmudical lore, holding the skein of white silk in their hands, and announcing the approach of the sabbath by their observation of its shifting tints. While the skein was yet golden, the forge of the armourers still sounded, the fire of the cook still blazed, still the cavalry led their steeds to ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... rich, clear, rosy snow, with the hot young blood glowing through it like the faint red tinge we sometimes see on the inner side of a white rose leaf. Her hair was a very light brown, almost golden, and fluffy, soft, and fine as a skein of Arras silk. She was of medium height, with a figure that Venus might have envied. Her feet and hands were small, and apparently made for the sole purpose of driving mankind distracted. In fact, that seemed to be the paramount object in her creation, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... a letter. During the writing of it she jumped at every sound: a footstep in the hall, the shutting of a door, a voice calling in the street. And yet, Martha was guilty of performing only what she considered to be her bounden duty. It is the prerogative of fate to tangle or untangle the skein of human lives; but still, there are those who elect themselves to break the news gently, to lessen the shock of the blow which fate is ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... theory as set forth by Wordsworth and Lessing, are distinctly derived from the same source. Rightly elucidated, the philosophical historian will find in it an invaluable clue to the unravelment of the tangled skein of human endeavor. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... fighting off these yearnings while he gathered his far-strayed wits. Now and then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask one ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... we can never Straighten out life's tangled skein, Why should we, in vain endeavour, Guess ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of maple bark, the same of sumach berries, and a peck of walnut hulls or bark; put a layer of this in an iron pot, and a layer of the wool, till all is in; cover it with water, and boil it slowly for three hours, keeping the pot filled with water; then hang it out, and when dry, wash one skein, and if it is not dark enough, strain the dye, and put in a tea-cup of copperas; put in the yarn, and let it scald a few minutes; take it out, dry it, and wash it well with ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... upon every one of them, be it in the warp or the woof of a scheme! We have seen that in this case, one of them gave way under the rough handling of Sir Philip Hastings, and the whole fabric was in imminent danger of running down and becoming nothing but a raveled skein. Mrs. Hazleton was resolved that it should not be so, and now she was busily engaged in the attempt to knot together the broken thread, and to lay all the others straight and in right order again. This was the secret of the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of the fingers. Smaller scraps were put in to welt the seams; and all this went off in great bundles to farmhouses to be sewed by the farmers' wives and daughters for the earning of pin-money. If the gloves were to be the most genteel members of the buckskin race, there was added to the bundle a skein of silk, with which a slender vine was to be worked on the back of the hand. The sewing was done with a needle three-sided at the point, and a stout waxed thread was used. A needle of this sort went in more easily than a round one, but even then it was rather wearisome ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... went and sat down on the floor before an easy-chair, through a rent in the old covering of which the hair was escaping, and drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of worsted, she set to work to mend it. For three days past she had been waiting for an hour's time to do this piece of mending, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Sitting (of assembly) kunsido. Situation situacio, sido. Situation (post) oficio. Six ses. Sixteen dek-ses. Sixty sesdek. Size grandeco. Size (of a book) formato. Size glueto. Skate gliti. Skates glitiloj. Skein fadenaro. Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin hauxto. Skin (animal) felo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in the factory, and of the factory buildings themselves, and, back of them, again, the tool makers and the providers of raw materials? It is obvious that no human intellect could ever unravel the tangled skein of human labor, and that in actual exchange there can be no calculation of the respective labor content of commodities. If the law of value holds good, it must operate mechanically, automatically. And this it does, through the incidence of bargaining ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... trace the thread of what we at present consider abnormal, through the whole skein of a single life, hoping thereby to encourage ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, "karatas," armed with their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... shades of scarlet, four ditto of crimson, four ditto of amber, four ditto of peach, three ditto of stone-colours, three ditto of blue, three ditto of blue greens, three ditto of yellow greens, and one skein of white embroidery silk ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... way, and that when thou didst go by chance to her, she was ready for thee. But if this is all she knows, it goes not far. Still it may help—it may help. In a tangled web, no one may say which will be the thread which patiently followed may unravel the skein." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... honest warrior was dismayed to find such a thing could have happened, and although he was unable to read the lettering, he turned the missive over and over in his hand as if he expected close scrutiny to unravel the skein. He then departed and questioned the guards closely, but was assured that no one had entered ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the dry earth, with my little side-bag for pillow, and to look at the clear night above the hills, and to listen to the very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in this strange southern country, there might not be snakes gliding about in the undergrowth. Caught in such a skein of influence I was soothed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... from Paris utterly disgusted with life, sick with himself. Bitterly resentful against fate for creating such a tangled skein, and dangling happiness in front of him only to snatch it away again. He went up to Arranstoun and tried to play his part in the rejoicings at his return. He opened the house, engaged a full staff of servants, and filled it with guests. He shot with frantic eagerness for one week, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... of pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her reddish hair-chestnut, if you will—let fall a skein over one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. Conceived of the mountains, built in their image, the face partook alternately of mountain terror or splendour; wholly, he remembered, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remote for his consideration. I remember his showing us a new scientific way to build a fire, lighting it from the top; and it is upon a lesson of his on rural sanitation that I have based my own management of those matters in our country home. I have a pleasant memory of his holding a skein of wool for me to wind one wet afternoon, and of his telling me the while of his observations of a family of bugs. He was travelling in the East, and at some place where he stayed was much distressed by ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... cut the ragging and the roses and the rum— Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze! Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum, And imitate the art of ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... him sternly, spake Odysseus of many counsels: "Atreus' son, what word hath passed the door of thy lips? Man of mischief, sure thou shouldst lead some other inglorious army, not be king among us, to whom Zeus hath given it, from youth even unto age, to wind the skein of grievous wars, till every man of us perish. Art thou indeed so eager to leave the wide-wayed city of the Trojans, the city for which we endure with sorrow so many evils? Be silent, lest some other of the Achaians hear this word, that ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.) |
