We welcome Pegg Thomas and her heroine Miss Yarrow Fenn. Yarrow is the heroine of "
In Sheep's Clothing", one of the novellas in
A Bouquet of Brides . Miss Fenn lives
in the town of Milford in Connecticut Colony in 1702. She’s known for making
the best cloth in the colony.
OWG: Thank you for
joining us, Miss Fenn.
YF: I am honored, and
please, call me Yarrow.
OWG: Isn’t yarrow a plant?
YF: Indeed. Yarrow is
a flowering herb often used to dye yarn. It produces a golden-brown color, not
unlike my hair and hazel eyes.
OWG: That’s so
interesting. Our blog is about overcoming hardships through faith in God. I
understand you’ve had to overcome something recently.
YF: Indeed, I have.
I’m not proud of it. You see, when King William III signed the Wool Act, it
created problems for those of us living in the colonies. We had to sell our
wool to England and buy our cloth from England. But the wool was taxed twice
and then the cloth was taxed twice. A person could hardly afford to dress their
family. Being the unmarried sister, and having the skills to spin and weave, it
fell to me to produce our cloth. My sisters had no extra coin to pay for my
labors, and so I sold some of my cloth to the traveling peddler.
OWG: Didn’t the Wool
Act make selling cloth outside of your colony illegal?
YF: Indeed it did. I
sold the cloth to the traveling peddler, but I knew he was selling it in
Massachusetts Colony.
OWG: So you were
skirting the law?
YF: It shames me to
admit it, but I was. Then I realized that I was putting my faith and trust in
the coin I earned and not waiting on God to supply my needs. I finally had to
admit that skirting man’s law was also sinning against God.
OWG: Oh, ouch. That’s
never an easy lesson to learn.
YF: ’Twas
not, but there is nothing so cleansing as confessing one’s sins to the One who
can take them away.
OWG: And did He?
YF: Not that alone,
He gave me what I had truly wanted all along.
OWG: And what was
that?
Pegg Thomas is giving away one of her signature shawls to
celebrate the release of In Sheep’s Clothing. The Meadowsweet
Shawl is named after the lamb in the story. Drawing will be the end of January.
To enter, simply sign up for Pegg’s newsletter.
Bio: Pegg Thomas lives on a hobby farm in Northern Michigan with Michael, her husband of *mumble*years. A life-long history geek, she writes “History with a Touch of Humor.”
Pegg's links:
NovelPASTimes
Giveaway: We're giving away a copy of A Bouquet of Brides to one of our OWG blog readers this week. Please leave a comment for a chance to win a copy!
Blurb: Across Three Autumns by Denise Weimer in The Backcountry Brides Collection
