The Long Thread Podcast

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...

One day, while waiting outside her daughter’s weaving class, Gabi van Tassell became fascinated with an old-fashioned quilt. The Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern combines groups of paper-pieced hexagons, and Gabi found herself wondering how she could weave the shapes. An active and curious crafter, she had explored a variety of fiber crafts, though she wasn’t yet a weaver. She experimented with...

In the early 2000’s, one episode of the Late Show with David Letterman boasted that a crocheter would make Dave a sweater over the course of the show. It sounded impossible, but their special guest backstage was Lily M. Chin, who held the title of World’s Fastest Crocheter. When the closing music played, Lily presented Letterman with his sweater—it was a bit short, but Dave pulled it over his head...

A lifelong crafter, Jennifer B. Williams had tried a wide variety of fiber techniques, but she felt something fall into place the first time she sat down to a lesson at an inkle loom. “It was the strangest thing to me. When I started inkle weaving, I started thinking through inkle,” she says. Delicate bracelets, origami fish, flip-flop straps? Absolutely! Joining bands edge to edge, folding strips...

Visiting museums and archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Louie García finds inspiration to revive the fiber techniques of the past. He has participated in creating several recreations of ancient textiles, including a replica of the 800-year-old Arizona Openwork Shirt, and is a member of the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project, which studies artifacts including baskets, plaited and twined yu...

Like many spinners, Charan Sachar discovered fiber crafts without realizing that they would transform his life. While studying for a masters degree in computer science, he began working with clay, making functional and decorative pieces. He loved the cool, slick texture of clay and the pleasure of working with his hands, eventually making pottery his full-time career. During down times in the pott...

When colonists first left Spain for what became Mexico and the American Southwest in 1598, they came with the continent’s first wool sheep. These weren’t the famed finewool Spanish Merinos—export of those was punishable by death—but rougher multipurpose Churra sheep. With simple tools, men sheared the sheep, women spindle-spun wool yarn, and men wove plain cloth called sabanilla. In their few spar...

As a knitter in a new place, Irene Waggener looks for knitting as she explores. Not all of the countries where she finds herself have robust yarn-shop networks and textile tourism, so sometimes she needs to get creative in her search. During a three-year stint in Morocco, her first glimpse of knitting was in the back of a local museum, where a striking pair of black-and-white knitted pants hung am...

In 1974, two young industrial designers in the Netherlands started a company making spinning wheels. Beginning in a family member’s chicken coop, they built a modern wheel featuring an upright castle-style format, a then-uncommon bobbin-lead drive system, and a drive wheel without spokes. Jan Louët Feisser and Clemens Claessen named their company Louët and began building the now-iconic S10 spinnin...

The Nettle Dress is available to stream online from November 15–December 2, 2024. Most of us avoid nettles, thinking of them as weeds whose little stinging hairs can inject a painful toxin into the unexpecting walker. But strolling through the woods near his home in England, Allan Brown was captivated by the tall native plants. Knowing that textile cultures across the world have produced cloth fro...