Forum Game: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Dear users, dear authors,
how about a new round of the story game?
Everyone writes a sentence that fits with the previous one, and hopefully a good story will emerge.

Sentence 1

Mild summer nights would be perfect for crafting, if only that night bird weren’t always outside the window.

It’s your turn.

Every evening, right at 10 p.m., it starts crying out so heart-rendingly.

With its fur bristling and its tail twitching, our cat—which had been sleeping peacefully just a moment ago—sits up and begins to growl menacingly.

The night bird’s cry seems to unsettle her beyond measure.

But suddenly, the night bird’s call turns into a beautiful song… his mate flutters gently toward him.

But even this doesn’t calm our agitated cat; she’s not at all receptive to this lovely sound. 

Sighing, I set my crochet project aside and say to the cat:

How about looking for a romantic partner yourself? It is spring, after all...

The poor animal looks at me in complete bewilderment and thinks to itself, “Then you shouldn’t have had me neutered last year.”

The cat lies down on the sofa to sleep again; outside, the night bird continues singing its sweet
melody as I see a man in the meadow behind the house....

... and think, surely he doesn’t want to disturb the night bird’s beautiful song now.

But no, he’s up to something far worse.

He actually pulls out a long, slender object that looks suspiciously like an air rifle...

...And aims in the direction the birdsong is coming from.

“Nooo!!!” I shout as loud as I can… and hear the pair of birds flutter away.

The man turns toward me, grins maliciously, revealing a terrifying gap in his teeth.

My scream suddenly startled my cat, who jumped up, looked out the window, and began to hiss furiously.

At exactly the same time, the neighbor’s “sweet, well-behaved” dog came running around the bush......

But the little Miniature Pinscher always tucks his tail between his legs when he sees my “battle cat” coming around the corner......

But this time, the cat was behind the glass, so he bravely ran toward the man’s calves.
....

The man now aimed his rifle at the little dog, but then...

The night bird swooped down from the very tall tree toward him; the man got a huge scare, turned around, and the dog bit......

But since the neighbor was wearing his thick rubber boots, his calves were spared.
Unfortunately, though, he fell on top of the poor dog.....

...which scurried away squeaking. “Well, I guess it’s quiet now,” I thought, and picked up my crochet project again...

... and I made myself comfortable on my sofa, and my cat was lying purring in her basket, with a blanket I’d crocheted myself inside.

But unfortunately, I was completely mistaken.

The doorbell rang at the front door, and I feared the worst.

.......

So I got up to take a look and opened the door.

Oh dear, my nice neighbor was at the door ... looking for his little dog.

And suddenly my cat had disappeared too—what now...?

Maybe the pair of birds can help with the search from above?

But what’s that? The cat had found its mate and...

She slipped into the garden shed with him. I followed her, and to my surprise, I saw.....

...that a huge surprise party was taking place there. The gap-toothed man was holding a glass, toasted me, and...

he called out, “Come on in and check out my collection of stuffed birds!”

Luckily, they were all crocheted and looked pretty nice, too.

Phew... that really took a weight off my shoulders...

(Sorry, typo—here’s the correct version:)
Phew... that really took a weight off my mind...

(Josefa, can you please correct this for me?)

@mowi19
I’ve corrected it :-)

Since I do so much crocheting myself, I suddenly became very interested in the man with the gap in his teeth, so...

I asked him who had crocheted the birds and where the patterns came from...

.... but he hesitated with his answer, not quite wanting to say it outright.

I wondered why he was so embarrassed by it?

So I poured him another drink to loosen his tongue.

But that didn’t just loosen his tongue, because...

Now even his legs were getting all wobbly.

and the guy started to wobble—oh dear, I thought...

.....if he falls over now, I won’t even be able to catch him. He’s definitely going to get a big bump on his head.

Luckily, there was a chair right there—I was able to grab it just in time before it fell over.
 

While he was slumped in his chair in a drunken stupor, I had plenty of time to take a closer look at the cabin. That’s when I noticed a trapdoor on the floor.

I carefully opened it, and you won’t believe what I saw down there:

I took the flashlight off the shelf so I could take a closer look. I turned it on, but darn it, the batteries were dead. Feeling helpless, I looked around the room. My gaze wandered to an old radio in the corner—it was one of those old mono radios I remembered from my childhood. I wondered if there might still be a few working batteries inside it.

But never mind, because just then the neighbor boy Benjamin showed up with his cell phone.
In the glow of the light, I saw a large pile of yarn lying there........

and nestled in the yarn were the two cats, cuddled up together, purring contentedly
and the little dog was just about to lie down with them when.......

...then the man perked up again and realized that the secret of the trapdoor had been discovered...

So now everyone was in the loop. Why not throw a yarn party, he thought to himself...

I thought that was a wonderful idea. I quickly grabbed my phone and sent a message asking who else had time—and, most importantly, some yarn on hand.

Hardly two hours had passed when hundreds of crocheted mice were standing in front of the garden shed. They were all laden with......

Baskets and bags overflowing with wonderful leftover yarn in many beautiful colors....

But they’d also brought along sausages, salads, drinks, and folding chairs. Now the barbecue and crochet party could begin. They told stories, laughed, and later on, danced naked (hihihi) around the campfire.

And then someone started crocheting a bikini for a nudist.....

Suddenly, with a blare of sirens, the police pulled up in front of the garden gate.

Completely startled, everyone scrambled about looking for their things.

Of course, a warning followed.
Immediately, someone from the nudist group asked, “Can we donate our hand-crocheted and hand-knitted toys to a charity raffle?”

The two men in uniform weren’t at all averse to the suggestion, especially since the big police raffle was coming up.

So they turned a blind eye and once again refrained from issuing a warning. But in return, they wanted...

...that in addition to the donations, we were also supposed to crochet something nice and colorful around the raffle’s grand prize.
That wasn’t so easy, though, because it was a bicycle.

Immediately .....

...we protested loudly and started wrapping the police officers in our yarn—there was plenty of it, after all. Still...

We all agreed, and went along with the suggestion. We didn’t want to end up with a fine after all.

We only had four weeks, so we had to come up with a plan fast.

The gap-toothed man’s yarn warehouse seemed like the obvious choice—after all, he was the one who got us into this whole mess. Or was he?

But now we were spoiled for choice. So we wandered through the whole village and asked people which colors were in style right now, so we could put them together for this extraordinary crochet project—that darn bicycle. After all, you don’t want to make a fool of yourself.

Some were already looking for suitable patterns. Now they just had to figure out who would make which part.
I was supposed to crochet the saddle cover.

It was supposed to be something very special, and that’s why...

... a pro had to step in.

Obviously, only an author from Crazy Patterns would do for that. Since I couldn’t immediately find a pattern for a saddle there, I started an author contest on CP, and the 1st prize was...

Enough yarn to last a lifetime!

I should have seen this coming: so many authors joined in that I couldn’t possibly go through all the patterns in such a short time. But then unexpected help arrived.

Josefa from the CP Forum had the saving idea.