Who is Kathy Sparling?

I hope to answer this question incrementally, with artifacts and clues, hard fact and soft rumor. I myself had little to go on when a friend sent me a link to Kathy Sparling's YouTube video. I had heard an old fashioned string band a year or two ago, Al Dodge and the Sun Dodgers, a brace of serious men with mighty banjos and one sunny, smiling blonde with a clear, sweet voice. Kathy stood out.

In part because I knew she was accompanying herself on ukulele, I was unprepared for the modern quality of her original songs. The YouTube video of her song "Embroidery" was a crash course in something unexpected.