Status
Available
Description
Biography & Autobiography. Crafts. Nonfiction. HTML: A fast-paced account of the year Clara Parkes spent transforming a 676-pound bale of fleece into saleable yarn, and the people and vanishing industry she discovered along the way Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins. In pursuit of the perfect yarn, Parkes describes a brush with the dangers of opening a bale (they can explode), and her adventures from Maine to Wisconsin ("the most knitterly state") and back again; along the way, she presents a behind-the-scenes look at the spinners, scourers, genius inventors, and crazy-complex mill machines that populate the yarn-making industry. By the end of the book, you'll be ready to set aside the backyard chickens and add a flock of sheep instead. Simply put, no other book exists that explores American culture through the lens of wool..… (more)
Publication
Harry N. Abrams (2019), 192 pages
Language
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ISBN
1419735314 / 9781419735318
User reviews
LibraryThing member bemislibrary
Follow one bale of wool from shearing off the sheep to final skein of yarn. Favorite line: "Asking for help doesn't always mean making other people miserable".
LibraryThing member Tytania
Clara Parkes buys a 676-pound bale of raw wool and sees it through to the finished yarn stage, by means of several differing mills and dye shops. Kind of the Michael Pollan of yarn. Basically, this book should have been titled, "Hey, Chris, Over Here".
Clara buys her wool on shearing day from a farm
The mills and shops are all wildly different, and give her wildly different results, almost all of them wonderful. Bartlett gives her a pleasing yarn she describes as being like "oatmeal," in contrast to the lovely yarn Blackberry gives her, which she compares to "jasmine rice." I thought those were knockout descriptions.
Clara's excitement is palpable. On the floor of one vast spinning mill, she says she feels like she's been shrunk to miniature size and let loose inside her Mom's Singer sewing machine. Another great description!
I liked that Clara is based in Maine and visits places I'm familiar with, like the dyeing company in Biddeford - haven't visited them per se, but I do think I was in a brewery next door last summer.
I may try more of her books - she seems like a super-fun fellow-wool-traveler!
Clara buys her wool on shearing day from a farm
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in New York state. She sends some of it to Bartlett Yarn in Maine, some to Blackberry Ridge in Wisconsin, some to a big mill called S&D, some to a precious-sounding two-person natural dye studio in California, some to a big chemical dye company in Biddeford, Maine. It's FUN!The mills and shops are all wildly different, and give her wildly different results, almost all of them wonderful. Bartlett gives her a pleasing yarn she describes as being like "oatmeal," in contrast to the lovely yarn Blackberry gives her, which she compares to "jasmine rice." I thought those were knockout descriptions.
Clara's excitement is palpable. On the floor of one vast spinning mill, she says she feels like she's been shrunk to miniature size and let loose inside her Mom's Singer sewing machine. Another great description!
I liked that Clara is based in Maine and visits places I'm familiar with, like the dyeing company in Biddeford - haven't visited them per se, but I do think I was in a brewery next door last summer.
I may try more of her books - she seems like a super-fun fellow-wool-traveler!
Show Less
LibraryThing member willszal
Clara Parkes, claims to be the only professional yarn critic. After decades of working with with wool, she decided it was time to explore American wool from sheep to needle through a business venture. This book traces her journey from 2012 (the purchase of 676-pound bale of wool) to publication in
Parkes states that she was setting out on her own Michael Pollan journey, and it was actually off the heels of reading a Pollan book that I decided to search for something on wool and came across this title (so, judging by search algorithms, she has accomplished her aim).
The book is quite short, coming it at less than two-hundred pages, or around five hours of audio.
Through this book Parkes explores the American wool industry from small to industrial scale, in a number of hand-on field trips. Her writing in engaging and articulate.
In 2010, Slow Money was booming and local food systems were gaining prominence. Around this time I asked the founder of Slow Money, "why just local food; what about everything else?" He responded, "that's my aim, but we need to start somewhere." A decade on, it feels as though our country is now ready to move out from local food, to local manufacturing and supply, and Parkes' journalism epitomizes this shift.
Last summer I purchased my first pair of American grown, woven, and sewn jeans from Hartford Denim Company in Connecticut. This winter I purchased two shirts of American grown, spun, knit, and dyed wool from Rambler's Way in Maine. All of these pieces of clothing were expensive, but the Hardenco jeans have a lifetime warranty of unlimited repairs, and the last pair of shirts I got from Rambler's way lasted me a good five years of weekly use. People used to get by with only a few pairs of clothes that they washed once a month; why do we need massive quantities of poorly-made textiles? These items represent one of my five pairs of pants, and two of my ten long-sleeve shirts.
You can't discuss American manufacturing without at least alluding to a subtext of globalization, financialization, neoliberalism, nativism, and wealth inequality. Although this book isn't political in nature and doesn't explicitly explore these subjects, it isn't much of a leap to hear from the mouths of working- and owning-class Americans across the country the ways in which these topics pervade the question of, "why is the American wool industry a ghost of what it used to be?"
Another piece of subtext that Parkes doesn't broach, but isn't far beyond her line of thinking, regards the ecology of wool. Yes, wool doesn't off-gas, nor does it shed toxic micro-plastics. And yet, it was the wool boom of the 19th century that was partially responsible for the near-complete deforestation of New England forests, and the erosion of a majority of our upland topsoils. Being an advocate of regenerative agriculture, I'll be the first to mention that there are ways of raising sheep that result in a net ecological benefit; that said, I would also be remiss not to mention that the vast majority of agriculture, including a lot of wool production, results in negative outcomes for livestock wellbeing and ecosystem vitality.
This book speaks a bit to the aesthetics of craft. What it is like to make things with our own two hands? What is it like to work with equipment that has seen the generations come and go, and to be able to maintain that equipment on our own? My father has recently set himself up with a woodshed composed exclusively of hand tools, many of them restored from 19th century stock. I myself worked for a year as a tracker organ mechanic (the old style mechanical pipe organs). There is an inherent value to these ways of life that we shouldn't look to justify by other ends.
Although not quite so nostalgic or personal, Parkes poignant portraits of everyday Americans is reminiscent of the work of Peter Miller in his "Vermont People."
A recurring theme in Parkes' book is her dream of starting an all-American sweater company. I commend this attitude, and I wish her an entrepreneurial future. And, if she is to be successful, she'll need to give much consideration to the economic and ecological reasons that she doesn't have much competition.
If you're wondering what's next after farm-to-table, and considering the context in which a agricultural and rural economies can thrive, this is a great place to start.
Show More
2019.Parkes states that she was setting out on her own Michael Pollan journey, and it was actually off the heels of reading a Pollan book that I decided to search for something on wool and came across this title (so, judging by search algorithms, she has accomplished her aim).
The book is quite short, coming it at less than two-hundred pages, or around five hours of audio.
Through this book Parkes explores the American wool industry from small to industrial scale, in a number of hand-on field trips. Her writing in engaging and articulate.
In 2010, Slow Money was booming and local food systems were gaining prominence. Around this time I asked the founder of Slow Money, "why just local food; what about everything else?" He responded, "that's my aim, but we need to start somewhere." A decade on, it feels as though our country is now ready to move out from local food, to local manufacturing and supply, and Parkes' journalism epitomizes this shift.
Last summer I purchased my first pair of American grown, woven, and sewn jeans from Hartford Denim Company in Connecticut. This winter I purchased two shirts of American grown, spun, knit, and dyed wool from Rambler's Way in Maine. All of these pieces of clothing were expensive, but the Hardenco jeans have a lifetime warranty of unlimited repairs, and the last pair of shirts I got from Rambler's way lasted me a good five years of weekly use. People used to get by with only a few pairs of clothes that they washed once a month; why do we need massive quantities of poorly-made textiles? These items represent one of my five pairs of pants, and two of my ten long-sleeve shirts.
You can't discuss American manufacturing without at least alluding to a subtext of globalization, financialization, neoliberalism, nativism, and wealth inequality. Although this book isn't political in nature and doesn't explicitly explore these subjects, it isn't much of a leap to hear from the mouths of working- and owning-class Americans across the country the ways in which these topics pervade the question of, "why is the American wool industry a ghost of what it used to be?"
Another piece of subtext that Parkes doesn't broach, but isn't far beyond her line of thinking, regards the ecology of wool. Yes, wool doesn't off-gas, nor does it shed toxic micro-plastics. And yet, it was the wool boom of the 19th century that was partially responsible for the near-complete deforestation of New England forests, and the erosion of a majority of our upland topsoils. Being an advocate of regenerative agriculture, I'll be the first to mention that there are ways of raising sheep that result in a net ecological benefit; that said, I would also be remiss not to mention that the vast majority of agriculture, including a lot of wool production, results in negative outcomes for livestock wellbeing and ecosystem vitality.
This book speaks a bit to the aesthetics of craft. What it is like to make things with our own two hands? What is it like to work with equipment that has seen the generations come and go, and to be able to maintain that equipment on our own? My father has recently set himself up with a woodshed composed exclusively of hand tools, many of them restored from 19th century stock. I myself worked for a year as a tracker organ mechanic (the old style mechanical pipe organs). There is an inherent value to these ways of life that we shouldn't look to justify by other ends.
Although not quite so nostalgic or personal, Parkes poignant portraits of everyday Americans is reminiscent of the work of Peter Miller in his "Vermont People."
A recurring theme in Parkes' book is her dream of starting an all-American sweater company. I commend this attitude, and I wish her an entrepreneurial future. And, if she is to be successful, she'll need to give much consideration to the economic and ecological reasons that she doesn't have much competition.
If you're wondering what's next after farm-to-table, and considering the context in which a agricultural and rural economies can thrive, this is a great place to start.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ShannonRose4
What would you do with a 676-pound bale of fleece? Clara Parkes wasn’t completely sure either, even after it arrived; but just like any good knitter, she had some…ideas. What would be any knitter’s dream came true for Carla, ---or would come true--as soon as she could cut the straps off the
This great sheep adventure from Maine to Wisconsin will have you thinking about an industry that is still necessary but often forgotten. If it is made of fiber, it was most likely made on machines where the parts have been pieced together (and often held together) with duck tape after being found or rescued from mills that have long ago shuttered.
Before reading this book, I had no idea how long a journey fleece went on to reach my needles, What ensued is a surprising adventure, history lesson and a behind-the-scenes tour of a fading industry that I could not put down.
Show More
huge bale without the ball of rather dirty fluffy stuff exploding all over the warehouse she found big enough to hold such a delivery… This great sheep adventure from Maine to Wisconsin will have you thinking about an industry that is still necessary but often forgotten. If it is made of fiber, it was most likely made on machines where the parts have been pieced together (and often held together) with duck tape after being found or rescued from mills that have long ago shuttered.
Before reading this book, I had no idea how long a journey fleece went on to reach my needles, What ensued is a surprising adventure, history lesson and a behind-the-scenes tour of a fading industry that I could not put down.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ShannonRose4
What would you do with a 676-pound bale of fleece? Clara Parkes wasn’t completely sure either, even after it arrived; but just like any good knitter, she had some…ideas. What would be any knitter’s dream came true for Carla, ---or would come true--as soon as she could cut the straps off the
This great sheep adventure from Maine to Wisconsin will have you thinking about an industry that is still necessary but often forgotten. If it is made of fiber, it was most likely made on machines where the parts have been pieced together (and often held together) with duck tape after being found or rescued from mills that have long ago shuttered.
Before reading this book, I had no idea how long a journey fleece went on to reach my needles, What ensued is a surprising adventure, history lesson and a behind-the-scenes tour of a fading industry that I could not put down.
Show More
huge bale without the ball of rather dirty fluffy stuff exploding all over the warehouse she found big enough to hold such a delivery… This great sheep adventure from Maine to Wisconsin will have you thinking about an industry that is still necessary but often forgotten. If it is made of fiber, it was most likely made on machines where the parts have been pieced together (and often held together) with duck tape after being found or rescued from mills that have long ago shuttered.
Before reading this book, I had no idea how long a journey fleece went on to reach my needles, What ensued is a surprising adventure, history lesson and a behind-the-scenes tour of a fading industry that I could not put down.
Show Less
LibraryThing member gbelik
What a saga! The author follows the journey of wool from sheep to yarn and it is quite a journey; I have increased respect for the wool yarn I'm knitting with. Fascinating, though I had a hard time picturing some of the machinery involved
LibraryThing member sriddell
A fun look behind the scenes of the American wool industry.
The author is a well-known knitting expert. She's offered an opportunity to work with a 700 pound bale of raw wool. She takes us on a journey through wool processing from shearing to cleaning to yarn spinning to dyeing and finally to a
She returns a few times to a question she asked of a sheep rancher: How can we save the wool industry? The answer: Use more wool.
The author is a well-known knitting expert. She's offered an opportunity to work with a 700 pound bale of raw wool. She takes us on a journey through wool processing from shearing to cleaning to yarn spinning to dyeing and finally to a
Show More
finished product made with the dyed wool.She returns a few times to a question she asked of a sheep rancher: How can we save the wool industry? The answer: Use more wool.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Crazymamie
I have no idea where I heard about this one, and now I am wondering if it was an Audible Daily Deal at some point. It's fascinating and completely charming. The author narrates it herself and does and excellent job - and I am very picky about my narrators. This is an examination of the American
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wool industry and why it is slowly vanishing. She starts with the sheep, and takes you all the way through her journey of turning a bale of fleece into marketable yarn. She divides up her fleece and some it goes through independent mills and some through highly commercial ones. She does the same thing when it comes to dying it. She asks great questions and makes you care about what the answers are, all the while making the journey a highly entertaining one. Show Less
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019-10