Chapters 11 and 12 Summary

Callie's mother sees Lula's excellent needlework and decides that Callie needs to practice more, so she insists that she begin knitting socks to give as Christmas gifts to her father, grandfather and all six brothers, much to Callie's dismay. After several hours of knitting, she goes to see her grandfather and learns, to her surprise, that he can knit. He tells her that during the war, men had to be self sufficient, so he learned many skills, including cooking, prompting a discussion about Viola, the family's cook. Callie says she doesn't understand how Viola can stand to spend all her time cooking, but Granddaddy says that it is all she knows and that she realizes she is fortunate to be a house servant rather than chopping cotton in the fields. In the laboratory, they begin studying a sample of a plant...