It was Spring 2006 and we had just returned from New Zealand. While there I had gone to the Majacraft Magic Weekend and met and roomed with Pat Old, a spinner and certified wool handler.
Back in the US, Mr. JumpSheep grabs his coin collection to add the new ones from this recent trip and he decides to get rid of bus coin tokens that he had come upon previously. He asks, “Do you know someone who might find use for these?” I immediately thought of Pat as she and I had fun attaching objects to handspun yarn at the camp. She is, in fact, the other person in my avatar. I mailed the coins to the North Island where Pat breeds sheep and I received a “thank you” email saying she hadn’t quite thought of what to do with them, but that she’d find something…
Fastforward to this Fall and I received an email from Pat with picture of what seemed like a necktie made of handspun yarn. She wrote: “You sent me some bus tokens to spin with, and it took me ages to figure out what I would do with them. I finally spun a sharl yarn of overdyed grey finn fleece with the tokens attached at the ends of the snarls. I plied this with a scouring pad that I had ‘unknitted’. I knitted this tie and called it ‘The Bus Driver’! It caused some laughs in an exhibition recently.”
Pat added, “I am currently writing a book on spinning and it is at the very stressful proofing stage. Thankfully Glynnis ( of Majacraft) is helping when I get brain fade! So look out for ‘In a Spin’. Hopefully it will be out by Christmas.”
Meanwhile, Pat and Glynnis and the other Majacraft regulars are getting ready for Lexi’s appearance in New Zealand scheduled for February 2010.
