Criminally Spun Out: Book 5 of the Fiber Maven's Mysteries Read online

  Criminally

  Spun Out

  Book 5 of the Fiber Mavens Mysteries

  By

  J. Traveler Pelton

  copyright © 2021

  Potpourri Publishing, Limited

  Mt. Vernon, OH 43050

  COPYRIGHT

  Criminally Spun Out: Book Five of the Fiber Mavens Mysteries by J. Traveler Pelton

  Copyright© 2021

  All Rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information and retrievable systems without permission from the publisher/author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in the U.S.A. by Potpourri Publishing

  Cover design by RebecaCovers

  Edited by Write Useful

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition published;

  Books> fiction> cozy mystery

  Disclaimer: Any resemblance to any person living or dead is totally unplanned. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  First, to my God and Creator, Savior and Guide, who gives us dreams and tasks, who gifts us with imagination and who breathes life into our dreams. To my family who, while they do not possess infinite patience, are tolerant of the odd hours writers and other creative folks need to work. I love them all.

  I dedicate with love to all those who have been to the shadowy edge of life, looked over and decided to come back and try again. I’ve been there, I came back; it was worth the fight. May you keep the warmth and wealth of love in your hearts always. Love is what keeps us whole.

  I dedicate it to my ancestors who walked the Red Road before me. Someday we will all walk the Skylands together. Until then may our hearts beat with the drum of unity and peace.

  May God grant us the courage to live with whatever life sends us and overcome trials always with His peace.

  And to all fiber artists everywhere – you know who you are – that love a good mystery. May our tribe increase!

  Finally, to my readers, because a story isn’t a story until someone else hears it; it is simply a phantasm, a dream in the maker’s head. You make it live when you read it and for just a few brief moments, our imaginations combine and that’s when magic is still alive...

  Other Books by Traveler Pelton

  Spiritual Works

  God Wanted to Write a Bestseller

  Big God, Little Me

  Lenten Stories for God’s Little Children

  Natural Morning

  Ninety Days to The God Habit

  Tales for Advent and Christmas

  His Path Is Mine

  Calming my Clamor

  Calm Instead of Clamor

  Christian Literary Historical/Science Fiction

  The First Oberllyn Family Trilogy: The Past

  The Oberllyn’s Overland: 1855-1862

  Terrorists, Traitors and Spies 1900-1990

  Rebooting the Oberllyn’s 2015-2020

  The Second Oberllyn Family Trilogy: The Present

  The Infant Conspiracy

  Kai Dante’s Stratagem

  The Obligation of Being Oberllyn

  The Third Oberllyn Family Trilogy: The Future

  To Protect One's Own

  The Importance of Family Ties

  Kith and Kin, Together Again

  The First Oberllyn Family Omnibus

  The Second Oberllyn Family

  The Third Oberllyn Omnibus

  The Fiber Mavens Mystery Series

  Quilting Can be Criminal

  Criminally Quilted

  Criminally Pieced Together

  Criminally Crocheted

  Criminally Spun Out

  In Collaboration with T. Bear Pelton:

  Clan Falconer's War

  The Rise of the Rebellion

  Changeling's Clan

  Forged in Water and Fire

  Other Authors Associated with Potpourri Publishing

  Lynette Spencer of Write Useful

  Sewing on a Budget

  Vegetarian Cooking on a Budget

  Dan Pelton

  The Majestic Spectrum of God's Love

  Chapter One

  The doorbell chimed as a woman entered the Fiber Avalanche, carrying a large bag of what appeared to be fiber. Lydia met her as she headed back for the store checkout.

  “Good morning!” Lydia smiled. “Lovely day out, yah? May I help you?”

  “For a chilly fall day, it’s lovely out,” smiled the stranger. “Is Allyssa here? I have a one o’clock appointment with her.”

  “Welcome!” exclaimed Allyssa from the top of a ladder. She was putting up fall displays near the right side of the store. “You must be Dana. Lydia, this is our new spinning instructor.”

  “Spinning instructor?” asked Lydia. “I thought she wasn’t coming until next week?”

  “The class starts next week. I asked her to come in and get acquainted today with us and the store. Can you fetch over my sister and as many of the rest of the staff as are available so she can get to know us all? We’ll just go back to the meeting room. Clarissa, can you watch the register?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” answered a young lady getting down from her step stool. She had been putting yarn into cubbyholes. She looked at the newcomer, tilted her head, and asked “Do you have one of those folding spinning wheels in that bag? I’ve always wanted to see one.”

  Dana grinned. “Oh, no, just fiber I wanted to share and figure out where to hang.”

  “Yes, we’ll be carrying her yarns and fiber roving once she gets started properly,” Allyssa smiled as she came down the ladder, pushing her hair back into its bun and straightening her apron. “Are Thom and Mike here?”

  “Coming wife,” called out Mike. “New staff? We got champagne?”

  “You’ll have to do with tea,” laughed his wife.

  “Long as it’s that peppermint cocoa kind you got last week. Stuff is really tasty.”

  The Fiber Mavens shop was owned and operated by Allyssa Martin and her Amish helper Lydia Fisher; with the assistance of seasonal help Clarissa Jacobs and Annie Malcom. It formed the center of a block-wide, all-in-one-building craft mall. Fabric Avalanche quilt shop owner Suzanne Hays, Allyssa’s sister, and her helper Miriam Miller ran the only fabric store in town, and Clarissa and Annie worked between the two stores, which were open to each other, helping whichever side needed them the most. Thom’s Hobbies adjoined his wife Suzanne’s shop and catered to the RC hobbyists in the town. Not Your Normal Antique Store adjoined Fiber Mavens and was run by Mike Martin and his son Alan. The Yarn Sisters, an eclectic group of ladies of all ages, from Casey Malcom’s twin babies to eighty-three-year-old Sophia Drummel, met weekly in the meeting room, making projects, gossiping, eating goodies, and having a high old time. The Oldtimers RC club met once a week in Thom’s store and had been known to wander over to the Yarn Sisters to filch cookies. They’d rearranged their own meeting to coincide with the ladies' get together to sneak over at half-time, as Thom was wont to say. The ladies just shook their heads, knowing that the menfolk would show up for work bees if needed as long as they kept them fed.

  Everyone worked together and the big old store, with four apartments on the second floor, was a hive of activity most days and a flagship of the local tourist trade. All in one place, a lady could bring her husband and he stay
happily lost while she went yarn stashing or fabric browsing. Neither would bother the other with what they got because both would most likely be guilty of some splurge buying. Thom was fond of saying if you couldn’t find it in one of their stores, it didn’t need found. Not Your Normal Antique Store included a small private museum of not-for-sale items that Mike regularly rotated and it fascinated just about anyone, and if a person weren’t crafty, they’d still find things to look at and pass the time with while the rest of the family picked out to-die-for yarns and fabrics.

  Dana was led to the staff room in the far back where the water was hot, the tea tray ready and a plate of cookies and small sandwiches waited.

  “Everyone, listen up,” announced Allyssa. “When we rearranged the store this spring to give us more room, you all noticed I left one corner section nearly empty and I told you it was for expansion into more fiber arts. I wanted to be able to allow the folks in our town to have total control over their fiber projects. Short of buying a herd, we can stock roving and wheels for them so they can learn to make their own yarn, and then take a dying class to get it the right color without harming the fiber and then take it to a crocheting or knitting class and bring it to the finished project and be able to say they did it all.”

  “Short of having animals themselves,” mused Thom. “I like that. Total control over your art.”

  “Yes, and I’ve been looking for just the right teacher. I met Dana at the Yarn Expo two months ago. She had wonderful rovings and was giving a demonstration on how to spin and the audience loved her. I asked her about traveling to give some classes and the funny thing was she told me she was moving shortly. I asked her where and it turns out this way. She’s even a judge of roving and fleeces at fiber shows. She bought that little farm out there next to Casey. I asked her to take time out of moving in to come to meet us all and let us see some of the products she’ll be adding to our store. Dana? Would you tell us a little about yourself?”

  “I’d be pleased to!” she started, sitting down her tea. “I’ve been spinning since I was nine years old. I learned from my mom and her mom. My mom and I bought that little twenty-acre place out on Painter Road six months ago, and we’ve had men out there painting and repairing and fixing the fences and such for us. We’ve been moving into it now, finally, and so far it’s fitting us well. My animals will be arriving tomorrow. I raise alpaca, highland cattle, pyagora goats, angora rabbits, Southdown sheep, and Mom has canaries. I mean a lot of canaries. We have one entire room on the sunny side of the house set up for her birds alone. It’s a lovely old farmhouse, so the two of us have plenty of room for our businesses. I shear my animals in the spring, and I pluck the rabbits in the summer and I use their fleeces to spin. I have contacts just about everywhere to get the other fleeces I need for my work: merino and yak, camel and mohair, silk, bamboo, and even some dog hair. We've got a grand barn with space for my animals at one end and hay storage overhead. We have closed off half of the upper and lower floor for my fiber work; we added windows for light and it’s a lovely studio. I have my looms, my wheels, my dying vats, everything on the first floor, and all the storage for my business and my office on the second. Most of my work I sell online and at shows and branching into putting it in stores is exciting.”

  She took a sip of her tea. “That chocolate mint tea is great. Anyway, I brought some samples here of things I do, with the help of my mom who lives with me and sometimes my daughters, but they’re off to university and aren’t home as much as they used to be.” She pulled out various plastic bags and a couple of boxes. “In these boxes are drop spindles I’ve collected in my travels, marked with the countries I got them in and the kind they are. The longest one is this Dineh one used to spin wool for blankets. It’s almost a meter long. The smallest is this one that’s really portable since it’s only 8 inches long and made with one of those 3-d printers. I got it at a tech show with my hubby two years ago.”

  She took a deep breath. “He and my son were killed in a plane accident a year ago coming back from a mission trip and I still miss them a lot. It’s one of the reasons I sold out where we lived and moved here, into the countryside. We were sort of cramped where we lived before, having just six acres, and now we can expand and be busy and put away some of the old memories. My mom is also a widow, although my dad died years ago. She’s a bird person; she judges bird shows and has an entire trophy case of awards for having the best singers and all that. She has around three hundred canaries, I think. They’re quite vociferous so they have the entire top floor along with mom at the farmhouse. At any rate, I have almost a hundred different spindles now. I have a Great wheel, also called a walking wheel, one I got from a small museum that was going out of business. If I believe the provenance, it dates from the late fifteen hundreds. It still works. I have a seventeenth century Saxon wheel and several others in my collection. I personally like my magicraft rose wheel for my own art spinning. The rovings I’ve brought are ones I either raised from my own animals, or obtained from friends.”

  She opened the big purse and started handing out small bags with roving samples. “These bags are let’s see, camel, and yak and mugo silk from India – see it’s gorgeous gold color? It was reserved for royalty. It’s like spinning gold.”

  “Sort of like the original Rumpelstiltskin?” asked Thom, touching the fiber.

  “Absolutely. And this is bamboo, and these are various yarns I’ve spun. My skeins are all 220 yards, which is standard and I make mostly worsted or sports weights. I dye it with natural dyes in most cases. I want to get my dye garden in this coming spring; I’ve collected the seeds and such from the beds I had back in Indiana and hope they’ll do well. There are already some of the trees and bushes I would use on the farm and I feel fortunate about that. I teach classes in spinning with drop spindles and with wheels and dying your own fiber. I sell entire fleeces to some folks – the same lady every year buys Herman’s fleece as soon as he’s shorn, she likes the feel of that alpaca so much.”

  The ladies all but cuddled the rovings and yarns. “These are so soft!” exclaimed Lydia. “I can see it for a baby sweater.”

  “That’s cria roving. A cria is a baby alpaca. This is merino, bamboo, and silk,” said Dana, pointing at a different ball of roving. "And I do use it for baby things."

  “And the colors are just lovely,” said Suzanne. “These blended ones are simply incredible, look at this one, black, yellow, white, a touch of blue”

  “That’s called chickadee,” smiled Dana. “I was thinking of the little bird when I made it. It spins up into a variegated yarn, like this.” She showed them a ball of yarn. “I also make up beginning kits that have a drop spindle; I normally use ones made by some of my craft friends because I like to support my fellow craft folks. I’ve brought some stock in the truck if you want to put up a display ahead of the class.”

  “That is exactly what I want to do!” exclaimed Allyssa. “Thom and Mike, can you help her carry it all in? Dana, we’ll get your paperwork done as one of our consigners, and help you get things set up for people to sign up for the class. Mildred Carmichael left us four spinning wheels we thought we could use for classes, and there are some drop spindles.”

  “Are you planning on selling the wheels?” asked Dana.

  “No, I want to keep them here for our people to use.”

  “Fine. Let’s get my things in, where ever it is you want them to go and get the display up, and then let me see your wheels and such so I can be certain they’ll work. Oh, and I also weave, not as good as my mom who is a master weaver and might be induced, later when she gets used to folks, to give weaving lessons.”

  “Really? That would be tremendous!” exclaimed Suzanne. “But looms are so expensive.”

  “Not if you start with small lap looms. You can get a small, flat lap loom for under thirty dollars; the larger ones are fifty, and move into a tapestry loom or onto a rigid heddle loom for under three hundred. The bigger floor models can get pricey but by th
e time you work up to them, you’re ready for that sort of investment. But one thing at a time,” said Dana. “From my experience, you want to be continuously rolling out something new every six months or so in a logical progression to make the most out of it.”

  “Did you have a store?” asked Mike.

  “My mom and grandma did, I sell at fiber shows mostly and teach at other’s stores. Running an actual store is way too time intensive and takes away from my art. I do have an online shop my mom tends. I have several YouTube videos out. I care for our animals, shear and prepare the fleeces for the mill, make the yarn, dye the yarn and teach classes. And most the time, we’re way too busy to be lonesome.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d allow me to exhibit these drop spindles at the Museum for a couple of weeks, would you?” asked Mike. “I have a locked case they can go into and I know a lot of people would be interested in them. I think it would build interest in your class as well.”

  “I’d like to see all of your stores when we’re done with the set-up,” said Dana. “I think this is going to be fun. Let’s talk about displays after we’re done with one thing. Oh! Nearly forgot. It’s getting cold out and I brought each of you a scarf woven of alpaca, angora, and silk. I brought eight of them, and they’re different colors and weaves, so if you could all pick one?”

  “You didn’t have to do that!” exclaimed Allyssa, petting the pile of scarves Dana held out.

  “This is exquisite,” said Suzanne, rubbing one against her cheek. “I may not want to take it off. Feel the nap and the softness!”