Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool

Vanishing Fleece is a fast-paced account of the year New York Times bestselling author 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.

"While I laughed and loved Clara's prose, I was left with so much more. It's actually a lovely and melancholy look at an American industry that's quickly changing, and a beautiful story of the people who are sacrificing to maintain it." --Judy Greer, actor, director, and author of I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star

Author: Clara Parkes
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Published: 04/06/2021
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781419735370

About the Author
Author of six books, including the New York Times bestselling Knitlandia, Clara Parkes has dedicated her life to figuring out what makes yarn tick--and finding the right words to write about it. She turned passion into profession in 2000 when she launched Knitter's Review, the first comprehensive online knitting magazine and community. Since then, through her writings, workshops, books, and television and radio appearances, Parkes has championed the notion of paying closer attention to what you knit and where it came from.