We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Vanishing Fleece: Adventures In American Wool
Product Description 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. Review "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"Given my hatred of puns, I absolutely do not want to say Clara Parkes spins an incredible yarn, but how else to describe this incredible book? Parkes is the Mark Kurlansky of wool!"--John Hodgman, actor, humorist, and author of Medallion Status"Through her woolly peregrinations, Parkes has become an unapologetic advocate for wool, a digital Cassandra in Allbirds, tweeting about the loss of this mill or that business, enjoining those of us who love the stuff -- and can afford it -- to not just consider the 'food that goes into our bodies' but also become 'more mindful of what we put on them,' because behind every skein of yarn there are dozens of stories."-- Leslie Petrovski, Vogue KnittingNamed an Editors' Fall Pick by Library Journal. About the Author Author of six books, including the New York Times bestselling Knitlandia, as well as editor of the anthology A Stash of One's Own, Clara Parkes has dedicated her life to figuring out what makes wool tick--and finding the right words to write about it. She 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. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Vanishing FleeceAdventures in American WoolBy Clara ParkesAbrams BooksCopyright © 2019 Jason WilsonAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4197-3531-8ContentsIntroduction: Girl Meets Bale, CHAPTER 1 Wool Harvest, CHAPTER 2 Double Bubble Bale and Trouble, CHAPTER 3 Infiltrating Big Wool, CHAPTER 4 Moving Bodies, CHAPTER 5 Bagging Up and Letting Go, CHAPTER 6 Bartlett Bound, CHAPTER 7 The Stradivarius of Salvage, CHAPTER 8 Journey to the Heart of the Madder, CHAPTER 9 Rust Belt Revival, CHAPTER 10 Tree House Confessions, CHAPTER 11 Saved by the Ball, CHAPTER 12 Halloween Spooktacular at the Haunted Dyehouse, CHAPTER 13 Casting Off, Acknowledgments, Index (tbd), CHAPTER 1WOOL HARVESTCHECK EUGENE WYATT'S CALENDAR on any given year and you'll find a giant X on the first Monday in March. That's when a crew arrives to this sheep farm in New York State for the annual rite of shearing. Depending on the year, Eugene will have upward of five hundred sheep to be shorn. The whole process takes up to three days to complete. Eugene times everything else in his year around this date, and it's one that cannot be missed
