Vanishing Fleece, Clara Parkes
Vanishing Fleece, Clara Parkes
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Vanishing Fleece
Adventures in American Wool

Author: Clara Parkes

Narrator: Clara Parkes

Unabridged: 5 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/21/2020


Synopsis

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.

About Clara Parkes

Clara Parkes is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestselling Knitlandia, as well as editor of the anthology A Stash of One's Own. She has dedicated her life to figuring out what makes wool tick-and finding the right words to write about it. Clara lives in Maine and divides her time between city and country, always writing from a desk in the kitchen while wearing as much wool as she can.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on October 09, 2021

This is a subject I know a little about from our small flock & the hand craft perspective of knitting/crocheting yarn I've spun from fleece. That's just enough to know how ignorant I am, especially about the commercial processes, so I really looked forward to this teaching me more. It's well narrate......more

Goodreads review by Jo on January 22, 2020

In Vanishing Yarn, Clara Parkes makes a comment about Michael Pollan as though she couldn’t possibly aspire to be on his level when it comes to writing; I’d say that on occasion, she comes close. She has the same easy to read self-deprecating style, the same determination to put herself out there an......more

Goodreads review by Biblio on January 17, 2020

Took a chance on this one -- I know nothing about wool, yarn, fabrics, knitting, but I get a kick out of books about someone doing some crazy project for a year, and this is certainly that. Clara Parkes, a yarn reviewer (yes, apparently that is a real job), decided to really find out what goes into......more

Goodreads review by britt_brooke on June 24, 2021

I picked this up in honor of my MIL who passed away last year, far too soon. For years, she raised angora goats, ran a spinning mill, and personally hand-dyed/painted her gorgeous yarns. Not sheep, but it’s the same idea. Parkes, a natural storyteller, takes us along as she transforms 600lbs+ wool i......more