My Friend Suzy

I can see it so clearly in my mind that I was sure there was a photo of me and Suzy sitting on the front step at Old Bedlam Farm the first time we met. It was 2009 and Jon had invited Suzy Fatzinger, her husband Joe, and their two sons, Isaac and Sam to the farm.

I don’t remember the story of how exactly that came to be, but I know it had something to do with Issac and the Yankees.

Jon and were together for about a year at the time and he told me about Suzy and thought we’d get along.  I was recently divorced and had lost a lot of my friends in the process as often happens. So I was eager to find new ones.  A lot of people went through our lives in those days, but few of them stuck.

Suzy is one who did.

I don’t remember what we talked about that first day.  I didn’t have sheep at the time, but I do remember being very comfortable with Suzy. Since Suzy and her family live in Pennsylvania, I imagine we kept in touch through email.  But again, I have little memory of those early conversations.

I remember that Suzy made the effort to keep in touch. Even showing up at one of the few craft fairs I attended early on when she and her family were vacationing nearby.

Eventually, texting made communication easier and I came to realize, over a conversation about crayons, that Suzy and I viewed feelings about things like colors and textures in a similar way.  When I got sheep I named one after Suzy and we began talking animals and wool as well as creativity.

Suzy brought her spinning wheel to one of the first Bedlam Farm Open Houses and spun her wool through the weekend.  She began by selling hats and cowls. Over the years she moved on to fingerless gloves, scarves, and shawls.

I sometimes forget that there are always new people coming to my blog and they don’t the whole story.   So when a couple of people contacted me, curious about Suzy and her shawls, I thought I’d write a little about her and our friendship.

I didn’t realize that Suzy and I had been friends for so long till I looked on Jon’s blog for a photo. I thought there might be one of Suzy and me together.  I didn’t find one, but I did find Jon’s blog post about the Fatzinger’s first visit to the farm with the picture of Sam and Isaac. (Rose uncharacteristically let Isaac pet her).

I know I was, in many ways, a different person in 2009 when I first met Suzy.  But I think our friendship grew as I did.  So in a way, she got to know me as I got to know my true self. And apparently, she likes the person I’ve become. Or maybe she always saw me for who I really am.

I do love working with Suzy.  It’s always a creative joy when she sends me photos of her shawls and I get to delve into their essence and write about what I see in each one.

Suzy has a few more shawls for sale that I’ll be posting for sale in the next couple of weeks.  I know one of them has some gorgeous purple wool in it because she sent me a video of it drying on her porch.  And she also has some blue and purple locks called Tanzanite (like the gemstone) that she got at the Rhinebeck Fiber Festival which will end up in a shawl too.

But that’s all I know for now.  I’ll just have to wait, like everyone else, till she sends me a photo to see what beauty she creates next.

You can click here to see some of the shawls Suzy has made in the past.