Reading: Vanishing Fleece
Aug. 9th, 2019 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartClara Parkes is a well-known figure in the world of knitting and crochet. Her website, Knitter's Review, was a source of online information on all things knitty long before Ravelry came into being; she wrote The Knitter's Book of Wool, The Knitter's Book of Yarn and The Knitter's Book of Socks, invaluable resources for crafters seeking to understand more about the ways that fibre content and construction influence the way a yarn will behave and what it will work well for. Her more recent books, The Yarn Whisperer, Knitlandia and A Stash of One's Own, have been collections of personal essays about yarn and her life with it; she's probably one of the few people to have become a big name in the yarn world because of something other than dyeing or designing.
Her new book, Vanishing Fleece, tells the story of what happened when a farming acquaintance offered her a 676-pound bale of superfine fleece from his small flock of Saxon Merino sheep. Parkes accepts the challenge, and embarks on a journey to learn about the stages of processing by which her bale of fleece will become yarn; scouring, carding, spinning, dyeing. It's also a look at the declining American textile industry, tenaciously clinging on despite stiff competition from overseas production, weaving the stories of the people she meets together with descriptions of the processes her fibre goes through. I found it a fascinating read, and a hugely entertaining one as well, thanks to the chatty, humorous tone of the writing. I knit a lot less these days than I used to, but this made me long to have needles and yarn in my hands. If only I could knit and read at the same time! (I sort of can with ebooks, but don't ever quite manage either as well as I'd like.)
Thanks to Netgalley for an advance review copy of this.
Her new book, Vanishing Fleece, tells the story of what happened when a farming acquaintance offered her a 676-pound bale of superfine fleece from his small flock of Saxon Merino sheep. Parkes accepts the challenge, and embarks on a journey to learn about the stages of processing by which her bale of fleece will become yarn; scouring, carding, spinning, dyeing. It's also a look at the declining American textile industry, tenaciously clinging on despite stiff competition from overseas production, weaving the stories of the people she meets together with descriptions of the processes her fibre goes through. I found it a fascinating read, and a hugely entertaining one as well, thanks to the chatty, humorous tone of the writing. I knit a lot less these days than I used to, but this made me long to have needles and yarn in my hands. If only I could knit and read at the same time! (I sort of can with ebooks, but don't ever quite manage either as well as I'd like.)
Thanks to Netgalley for an advance review copy of this.
