Investigations in the Whitby region of East Cleveland UK have yielded vital clues and possible heavyweight evidence relating to the case. A task force was dispatched there by myself on a hunch while looking for Dan Stairs' presence in East Cleveland Ohio, USA. While reserching the US East Cleveland in Ohio, I came across various mentions of Whitby in East Cleveland UK. The town's name rang bells in the investigative chambers of my brain due to its similarity to the name of the WhitbyBoat company first identified in Michigan in the early days of this case. My hunch proved to be correct and the team returned with ample evidence of activity in the town. Here one of the team recount their experience first hand.
A handwritten cardboard sign was found situated on the lower step of a building entrance which opened onto a busy shopping street. The sign read 'part-time sales assistant wanted - must be a knitter - apply within'. This immediately struck me as pertinent to the case. I was tempted to go inside and apply for the job myself, to test the reaction of the staff already present, but my lack of knitting knowledge would have been a dea giveaway, so I settled for the covert approach, secretly photographing evidence whenever I got the chance.
Further up the steps were two permanent signs which read 'wool' and 'crafts'. Alarm bells were ringing in my ears as well as my brain by now. These permanent signs indicated to me that the building is being/has been used for woolcraft purposes for a long period. The handwritten sign is obviously temporary and can put on show or hidden away at a moments notice, allowing the group operating from within stractegic options as to when to advertise for 'help'.
More handwritten signage covered the walls of the corridoor so I walked in to take a look and found another handwritten sign, this time for 'Bobbins Postal Service'. The sign described a 'british wools yorkshire service' which can, and does, 'post wools, kits and exclusive design (in denim) all over the world'. The global aspect of their contact details suggests they are by no means an isolated operation and are in touch with other groups and/or indivuals potentially spanning the entire globe. Another sign, this one painted on a wooden A-board, showed that their output was not limited to deniim, with pure wools, aran and rowan yarn all represented.
A quick flick through a pile of second hand paperback books sat on a bench in the entrance corridoor revealed a book called 'warrimoo' by a Mary Patchett. The author's name struck me in its similarity to Melinda Packett, possibly an early version of the alias, or even inspiration for it, though this could just be coincidence. I cannot recall the subject matter of the book.
Stepping back outside the building in to the street (I noticed I was drawing attention to myself hanging around in the corridoor with camera being swivelled and pointed at every sign in sight and feared my intentions may be about to be discovered) I looked up to see a large model of a ball of wool with a pair of knitting needlers crossed through it, hanging above the doorway like a chandelier. The structure was pretty big and I was surprised not to have spotted it on my way in. My guess is it is the craft circle's emblem used to identify themselves to others. A hand-drawn image of he same structure appeared on a poster in the shop next door to the craft centre circled by the words 'Knit Happens In Whitby', which by now was sounding like an understatement to this investigator. It advertised a meeting for a 'newly established craft circle' to which 'all members were welcome'. Unfortunately, this is not occuring until the end of the month and it is unlikely we will have any agents in the area to attend. I can only surmise that the operation is being expanded in the aera, hence the need for new recruits. I wonder if the timing of the expansion relates to the beards presence on the UK festival circuit in any way. Incidentally, the shop this advert was placed in is called 'The Shepherd's Purse' which brings to my mind Regan's quote about the relative riches of the shepherd and the banker noted earlier in the case.
The other piece of possible evidence discovered was an advert placed in the window of a disused shopspace (opposite the Shepherd's Purse) which mentioned a 'cargo shed relocation presentation' something which sounds vague but ominous. Could be related to shipping cargo out of whitby to elsewhere, or the relocation of sheds (or other buildings) possibly mirroring the Michigan housing re-plan.
I have listed much evidence here but little theory. I shall tackle the evidence in this manner now...
The first thing I must focus on is the ball of wool and crossed needle motif the Bobbins group are using. It seems very similar to the marks of crossed needles made on the great lake cave paintings found in Lima by EPPS, as described by Safelight. This cross motif is the opposite of the rings found drawn around the great lakes on the wallmap of the military man who Phipps (the woodland ranger in Maryland) had contact with. This leads me to conclude that there are definitely military and counter-culture operations active in the same field - the military using the circle as their power symbol, and the underground group using the crossed needles as theirs. So, we are dealing with a game of noughts and crosses. As is known by anybody who has played the game, the centrespot is by far the most effective position to hold on the grid; without taking control of this spot, the game is almost lost by default. In our investigation, any form of midpoint seems to be empty. I do not know what this means, so draw your own conclusion. One thought occurs to me - if the military are aligned with the circular sumbol, it seems likely that closed-loop production methods are the realm of the military, not the counter culture. This seems all the more probable due to the amount of resources the military has compared to the likely resources of any kind of underground operation.
The existence of the Whitby group could well explain Regan's presence in the Wolds. My guess is that the Bobbins operation is being bankrolled by Kozyra and Reagan is there to oversee operations. A further guess is that the Whitby location was selected as a UK site due to the similarity of the name to Whitby Boat co. Searly is the most likely candidate to have chosen the spot, I would imagine. Whitby is also a harbour town, and with boats and water having much to do with the case this would seem to be a key feature of most locations. The water/boating savvy group no doubt chose the place as it provided a means to ship goods out to sea privately, avoiding official border crossing points. The synchronicity of the town's name providing confirmation that is was the right choice for the group to run an operation from.
Bobbins co. are no doubt shipping stuff to USA and also recruiting other craft circles in some global craftweb. It is highly possible that new recruits do not know the intended purpose of what they are making, knitting purely for pleasure or for social reasons. My guess is that only a few top brass in the organisation know the true agenda. The most likely suspects for this are Searly, Reagan, Costa, Kozyra, Melody Nelson, Melinda Packett, Cate, Grant, De Leon and Vandeloo. Some of these names may be aliases for the same person, but further research is required to confirm this.
