Word: yarn
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...began over a year ago. Beatty was gearing up for two massive pet projects, film biographies of Billionaire Howard Hughes and John Reed, the messianic leftist author (Ten Days That Shook the World). Then Beatty decided to make a simpler movie first. "I thought I better do a nice yarn with a strong narrative," he says, "and Heaven Can Wait is all plot." Since the hero of Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a boxer, Beatty considered the film a good vehicle for Muhammad Ali, a friend whom he regards as a potential movie star. But Ali had a couple...
...Berkowitz's actions--and the purpose of the book--which was apparently to make lots of money--the authors had little freedom. What starts out as a penetrating portrait of the middle-class tragedy that was Berkowitz's first murder, of necessity turns into a fast-paced detective yarn. It seems as if the authors realized that they did not have enough time to delve into the subtle ramifications of each of Berkowitz's crimes, and settled on the Mickey Spillane approach instead. It is a shame; the book could have been much more powerful had the authors decided only...
Most sheep chicers are recent escapees from the suburbs, who get their folk wisdom from Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal. But their money and enthusiasm, along with a certain craving for hand-spun yarn and naturally colored fleece, lend impetus to the recent renaissance in New Hampshire sheep raising...
...couple of days of shopping for items that range from electrified fences and worm medicine to a $200 "rocking sheep" covered in natural fleece. Wolfing down golf-ball-size chunks of fresh lamb barbecue (at $3.50 a plate), they watch as skilled artisans turn piles of fleece into yarn with Rumpelstiltskin-like skill. After hours spent looking over the thickset Dorsets and Suffolks, fine-haired Merinos, goatish Barbado black bellies and exotic Karakuls on display, people whose only past experience with sheep also involved mint jelly begin to make knowing comments about various breeds...
...race begins when anxious spinners scoop up the fleece almost before it is off the sheep and stampede 50 yds. to their spinning wheels in a big corral. Spectators press in as the spinners cunningly twist the fleece into yarn, then turn it over to the weavers, who throw shuttles of yarn back and forth across the warps of their looms with metronomic regularity. "More gray, more gray," barks Debbie Abbott, captain of the defending champion, team Minnie and the Hampmonters. Without missing a beat, her spinners turn to. The resulting shawl, complete and ready for auction in less than...