The Tales of New Yarn City : Chapter 7 : The first case
Hailey joined her grandmother's friends – seven women of different ages met here for their weekly tea party, all of them with a love for yarn and most of them even owners of craft shops or yarn manufactories. Grandma called this illustrious society her "secret lodge meeting".
Today they talked about a promising new idea: recycled wool. One of the younger women, who always seemed slightly confused (Grandma told her she could join the „secret society“, but first she had to crochet 1000 granny squares as an entrance test), said that she collects all the non-sellers in a box for recycling. The wool is re-dyed and then goes on sale again, which saves resources. Only she probably mislaid the box and can no longer find it. Strange, how can such a big box get lost in such a small shop?
A very straight elderly lady (Grandma secretly called her the "high priestess") referred that she had been in business for 48 years and never lost a single ball! But exactly three days ago two (!) balls of finest mohair wool disappeared from her shop. At first she suspected theft – but who would steal such outrageous colors? They had been on the shelf for years. A color sin of a fortunately not long lasting trend.
It turned out that the other women have also been missing wool recently. The lost goods were all non-sellers in hideous colors, but best quality, no cheap yarn, no synthetic fibers.
Hailey intently listened to the descriptions of the ladies. There was something going on for sure – maybe a conspiracy or an anomaly in space-time that can only be explained with a highly complicated string-theory. Or did someone actually steal old yarn – a crazy retro handicraft fanatic?
She had to tell her new best friend about it. Mortimer has been busy redeveloping his parents' company lately, but a break would do him good. For weeks he had been working on a plan to modernize the factory, raving about new, non-lethal pest control products, experimenting with pheromones and studying animal psychology. The poor boy looked pale, probably he slept too little. Hailey had to take him out of himself. What would he say about the mysterious loss of wool?
