The Long Thread Podcast

Laverne Waddington discovered weaving by accident—bike accident, to be precise. Recuperating from a mountain biking crash in Utah, she discovered a book on Navajo weaving and was immediately intrigued. A local exhibit of Diné textiles enthralled her, and she set about learning to weave in the Navajo style. Returning to Patagonia, where she had been living, she built a simple loom and explored weav...

When Jen Simonic and Masey Kaplan’s friend lost her mother, she had the challenge of going through her mother’s things while grieving her loss. Among her posessions was something almost every crafter has at least one of: a work in progress. Jen and Masey had each finished projects for bereaved family members before, but neither of them could take on this one, a pair of crocheted blankets for two v...

As a college student and weaver, Amy Oxford fell in love with the punch-needle method of rug hooking almost by accident, a surprising benefit from a babysitting gig. She followed her interest from doing piece work on existing designs to creating large commissioned rugs in her own business. In 1995, she started the Oxford Company to sell supplies and education for punch needle crafters worldwide. T...

At an unexpected juncture in her life, artist Jordana Munk Martin turned to the legacy of her grandmother’s trove of textile books. Edith Wyle founded the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles in 1973, curating unconventional exhibits and instilling a love of art in her family. Her granddaughter found inspiration and comfort in the books, then opened the library for other artists to explore. Th...

Fiber artist Mary Anne Wise first went to Guatemala hoping to collect local textiles and inspire her own practice. Just one visit wasn’t enough, and she visited several more times, eventually offering a class in rug hooking to local women artisans. Although the women didn’t have a rug-hooking tradition, they did have abundant material: tons of tee shirts from “donations” that are often shipped to...

Sahara Briscoe has a challenge for you: Do more with yarn. Knit your spinning, spin your knitting, rug hook with yarn, paint on your swatches, embroider with yarn, and question your assumptions about what your stash is for. Working from a compact Bronx studio, Sahara can’t be easily classified under any label ending in -er except New Yorker. She spins, weaves on all kinds of looms, dyes, knits by...

In the history of wool, Spain means Merino, the legendary finewool sheep so prized that their export fell under royal control. From their Spanish origins, Merino genetics formed the basis of wool breeds around the world. The foundations of most finewools, especially in Australia and the United States, count Merino as a major contributor. Apart from Merino, the Spanish sheep carried by colonizers t...

This is Anne’s Book Club, a spotlight episode of the Long Thread Podcast where we share conversations about exciting new craft titles. This episode features three new books from Storey Publishing: The Stitched Landscape by Anna Hultin, The Handsewn Wardrobe by Louisa Owen Sonstroem, and Knitting Cowlettes by Safiyyah Talley. You’ll hear a conversation with each of the authors, followed by an excer...

Sarah Pedlow was enjoying an artist’s residency in Budapest when a museum visit changed the course of her artwork and her career. In the Ethnographic Museum, displays of traditional clothing and dowry goods from Hungarian villages showed an extraordinary variety of skills. Many of the intricately embroidered pieces spoke to an earlier time—although some had been created not that long ago. One type...

Most of us crafters know instinctively that working with yarn, fiber, and cloth makes life better. Believing that handwork is good for our well-being has sparked memes about knitting as “the new yoga” and sold tee shirts that read, “I knit so I don’t stab people.” But feeling good while practicing fiber art is only one of the ways that working with thread adds meaning to life. As a “passionate kni...

Anne’s Book Club is a new series of interviews with the authors of new fiber art books that I think Long Thread Podcast listeners will love. This episode features new books by Deb Essen, a frequent contributor to Handwoven and Little Looms. Deb Essen may weave plenty of blocks and squares, but you definitely can’t put her in a box. Not many weavers would release a book about turning pin-loom squar...

Some spinners and weavers picture the Schacht Spindle Company’s factory as a large-scale operation churning out equipment by the hundreds. After all, Schacht’s products are easily recognized in stores, studios, and guilds around the world. Others see the handmade touches—such as the ladybug on every Ladybug spinning wheel—and imagine Barry Schacht making every piece by himself. Although Schacht is...

Clara Parkes became many knitters’ guiding light and best friend when she launched Knitter's Review in 2000. One of the early standouts in the early online knitting landscape, the site developed a devoted following for its in-depth, objective yarn reviews and lively forums. Several years after the site's inception, she began writing books, starting with The Knitter's Book of Yarn, which was follow...

Hazel Tindall can’t remember a time before she knew how to knit. Hazel learned to knit when knitting for sale was the only way that women earned money, when a job outside the home in town was too far to travel. Although her mother found knitting a chore, Hazel liked it, not only knitting sweater yokes for sale but exploring yarns and designs from outside her local sphere. When knitting was work, k...

Tamara White always has one eye on the skies. Whether she’s getting her sheep ready for shearing, welcoming visitors to classes and events on the farm, or watching over the yarn in kettles of natural dye, there isn’t a moment when the weather isn’t on her mind. Although rain and heat make hard work of tending a flock of 100+ sheep plus calves, chickens, and other livestock, Tammy sees her work as...

With Madelyn van der Hoogt’s extensive knowledge of loom-controlled structures and techniques, you might be surprised to learn that the celebrated weaving teacher spent her first years as a handweaver working on a backstrap loom. On a sabbatical in Latin America from her teaching career in Oakland, Madelyn traveled from village to village looking for the style of weaving she wanted to do, then sou...

When you first learned to knit, you might have wondered why certain stitches made fabric that curled, or why right-leaning and left-leaning decreases didn’t quite match, or why charts didn’t really show what the knitted fabric would look like. Knitting patterns might have seemed completely unworkable. If we stick with the craft, most knitters eventually take these oddities in stride and work aroun...

At a time when many fiber arts stores are closing, Sara C. Bixler is bucking the trend. With degrees in both fine art and education, she had developed a studio practice as well as a teaching repertoire at the Pennsylvania weaving school where her father, Tom Knisely, had taught for decades. When that store closed, she decided to take the risk of opening a brand-new fiber arts center known as Red S...

You know about North Pole and the South Pole, where polar bears and penguins live. Have you heard of a third pole? West and south of the Tibetan Plateau, a mountainous area holds more glaciers than any place in the world outside the Arctic and Antarctic poles. This region has a special significance for fiber artists: it is the home and habitat of the goats that produce much of the world’s cashmere...

When Tom Knisely decided to buy his first item in an antique shop, he had two strokes of luck: the spinning wheel that he chose included all the parts needed to make yarn, and he lived not far from the landmark weaving store The Mannings. There, he learned to spin and eventually to weave. Enamored with the crafts, he got a job at the store there as a teenager and eventually built a career there ov...

A lifelong lover of fiber arts, Susan Strawn’s career in textiles began in an unexpected corner: with training as a biomedical illustrator. She found cloth far more exciting than biology, so she turned her eye for detail to illustrating PieceWork magazine. She added photostyling to her duties, bringing textile stories to life and demonstrating the steps of various needlework techniques. After a de...

Knitting and wool are so essential in the Faroe Islands that in the early 1800s, exports of sweaters and socks made up about half of the economy. Today, the nation of about 55,000 people has 8+ knitwear brands, 2 active spinning mills, and 70,000 ewes. Sissal Kristiansen, the owner of knitwear company Shisa Brand, started an initiative called The Wool Islands to celebrate the heritage and potentia...

When young Shay Pendray told the head of her school that she wanted to learn to sew, he had a prerequisite: He would give her a lamb, and she would learn to process the wool, spin it into yarn, and weave it into cloth, and then she could learn to sew. It was an extraordinary home ec class, but the administrator in question was Henry Ford. Shay was one of the students in Greenfield Village, a livin...

Some shepherds research extensively and choose the breed that best matches their needs. Others come across an animal or a whole flock and everything falls into place—it becomes clear that these are the sheep they’ve been waiting for. Robin Lynde had a farm with a few sheep in the mix, but when a local shepherd decided to sell her Jacob sheep, Robin jumped at the opportunity to own a flock of black...

Listening to her college-aged daughter making calls for AmeriCorps in 2020, Laura Nelkin was surprised at how many people in her community faced food insecurity and hunger every day. A problem that had seemed far away suddenly felt much closer to home, and Laura wanted to find a way to help. She had a feeling that other knitters would want to help, too, so she dreamed up a group effort: the Knit f...