The Long Thread Podcast

As Spin Off nears 50 years old, editor Pamela K. Schultz sees herself as the host of a wonderful spinning party that welcomes one and all.

Taking a day off from the grind of law school, Pamela Schultz visited an art fair and saw a spinner with a spinning wheel. A longtime knitter, she had resisted suggestions that she learn to spin, but the rhythm of treadling and drafting offered an antidote to her stress. She had a few hiccups at the beginning, fighting against unsuitable fiber and unloved tools, but eventually she was hooked.

Within...

Among four-shaft weavers, A Handweaver's Pattern Book is commonly referred to by just the author’s name—Davison—or as “the green book,” a reference to the iconic cover of many of the book’s printings. Since Marguerite Porter Davison first published it in 1944, it has been a foundational reference, the first book that many weavers buy and the one they keep close at hand. Packed with drafts and photographs for overshot, twill, crackle, and dozens of other structures, it’s the weaver’s answer to The Joy of Cooking: a starting point for design, a resource for understanding a structure, and...

Editor, teacher, and shepherd Kate Larson makes the case that every knitter is already part of the farm-to-fiber story—whether they know it or not.

Kate Larson is the editor of Farm & Fiber Knits and a beloved teacher of spinning, knitting, and weaving. She took time out from lambing season to talk about the magazine’s goals.

Kate Larson isn’t making a magazine only for farmers and handspinners. In this episode, she talks about what Farm & Fiber Knits is really for: helping knitters connect with the natural fibers they love. Whether you’re buying wool at...

Book Club Podcast: Fiber art veterans Susan Bateman and Melissa Parsons compare notes with host Anne Merrow about the books every weaver, spinner, knitter, and crocheter should have on the bookshelf—plus big news about a classic weaving directory.

They’re the first books you reach for, the ones you’ll never part with, and the first thing you recommend to every new crafter. If you have only one book on weaving, spinning, knitting, and crochet, make it one of these. In this episode of the Long Thread Podcast, three book lovers talk about what reading material we’d n...

Knitters and crocheters know Angela Tong as a designer with hooks and needles, while weavers recognize her work in rigid-heddle and pin looms. Visitors to galleries and artisan markets know her as a potter. Angela thinks of herself simply as a maker, always drawn to creating beauty with her hands.

Her first professional job set the tone: after earning a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she produced fine platinum jewelry for Tiffany & Co. But beginning in her teens, she keenly felt the urge to learn to knit. A colleague at that first job taught her...

Before Ravelry, before knitting podcasts, before the internet fully found its craft obsession, there was Knitty. Amy Sadler shares the inspiration and evolution of the online knitting phenomenon.

In the early 2000s, as the internet became part of daily life for millions, Amy Sadler began a knitting blog. The blog movement connected knitters around the world (whether newbies or longtime stitchers) and sparked friendships and inspiration. Amy participated in a blog ring, which directed readers from one blog to another, and saw the opportunity to collect and present the clever patterns and ideas that were cropping up...

What new craft books are can't-miss? Which are the classic reference books that every crafter should have on the shelf? In the Yarn Barn of Kansas Book Club, teachers and book lovers talk about the books they wouldn't be without.

Sponsored by Yarn Barn of Kansas

Learning how to weave but need the right shuttle? Hooked on knitting and in search of a lofty yarn? Yarn Barn of Kansas has been your partner in fiber since 1971. Whether you are around the corner from the Yarn Barn of Kansas, or around the country, they are truly...

Best known for his work with peanuts, renowned agricultural scientist George Washington Carver had a lifelong passion for needlework. Park Ranger Curtis Gregory shares stories about Carver’s interests in handwork and natural dyeing.

Born in 1865 near Diamond, Missouri, George Washington Carver is one of the best known and most respected agricultural scientists in the history of the United States. Before his death in 1943, Carver “created 325 uses for peanuts, 108 applications for sweet potatoes and 75 products derived from pecans. Some of the products he created include chili sauce, meat tenderizer, instant coffee, shaving cream, and Worcestershire sauce,” according to the...

Gudrun Johnston has a deep legacy in Shetland knitting: her father’s family comes from the islands, and her mother founded a knitwear company that blended contemporary silhouettes with Fair Isle motifs, a business she called the Shetland Trader. But although Gudrun grew up wearing her mother’s designs, she didn’t learn to knit from her. Growing up largely elsewhere in Scotland, she learned the craft as a child, but it didn’t become central to her life for decades.

She eventually fell in love with knitting, thousands of miles from Shetland. In 2007, she published her first de...

Christina Garton didn’t get to be the editor of Little Looms by taking weaving too seriously.

First introduced to weaving in a class post-college, she joined Handwoven as assistant editor in 2011. She developed her passions for editing and weaving while working on both multishaft and rigid-heddle looms. Although she still loves working on her four- and eight-shaft looms, she was surprised to discover that she loves the hands-on, up-close nature of hand-manipulated weaving.

With the launch of Little Looms in 2016, Christina began exploring the horizons of pin looms, rigid-heddle looms, and inkle looms. She’s fo...

Small textile towns were once common in New England, with stout brick buildings harnessing the power of the region’s water to mill yarn and cloth. The Colony family had been owners of a mill in Harrisville, New Hampshire, since before the Civil War, but by the mid-twentieth century, such factories had begun to disappear. In 1970, 53 mills closed in New England, the Colony family’s among them. John Colony (known as Chick) returned from serving in the Coast Guard to a mill town without a working mill.

Chick saw that the small town would wither unless a new...

The picture of a flock of primitive-breed sheep, the last of their kind, living on an island off the northeast coast of Scotland, has a certain romance to it. Plenty of knitters, spinners, fiber artists, and citizens of the modern world might idly dream of living on such an island and tending such a flock. With no background as a farmer and only a few years as a shepherd, Jane Cooper decided to bring that dream to life.

Enchanted by the fiber of the Boreray sheep, and with her life transformed by a class on knitting with...

When you picture lace, what comes to mind: an old-fashioned once-white piece of Victorian embellishment? The elegant, possibly itchy decoration on a wedding gown? If you are a needleworker, you might picture an array of bobbins leashed to a cluster of pins and arrayed on a pillow, or a tatting shuttle, or a steel crochet hook. All of these images would be correct—but capture the tiniest slice of the world’s laces.

As a PhD student, Elena Kanagy-Loux considers lace through the lenses of history, culture, and gender. How have textile artisans around the world developed lace...

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 weaving on her own until it became clear that she would need to move north to satify her hunger for weaving knowledge, settling in Bolivia.

Over the following decades, Laverne traveled in South and...

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 very tall sons.

If the two of them were happy to finish a loved one’s unfinished craft project, they thought, other fiber artists would be willin...

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.

The basic techniques of punch needle are straightforward enough to teach in a few minutes, but the opportunities for creativity in line, texture, and color have kept Amy enthralled for 40 years. After completing...

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.

That original collection is now the core of Tatter, a nonprofit organization named for soft, worn, well-used textiles. It includes the iconic Tatter Blue Library, an array of classes, a journal, an...

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 the area, discarded, and burned. After the success of that first class, the idea of creating a cottage industry that would benefit women throughout Guatemala took hold. Called Multicolores, the project is now a no...

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 hand and machine, crochets, hooks rugs, embroiders, designs custom fabrics for a range of clients, teaches, and writes, switching happily between them all and combining them as he...

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 to the Americas transformed those societies—consider the Spanish Churro in the vital Navajo-Churro breed.

Over the last century, the wool industry in Spain has weakened, with sheep increasingly bred for meat and cheese. Th...

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 excerpt of some of my favorite passages. I was excited to choose each of the titles to feature, and I hope you enjoy the conversations and the books as much as I have!

The...

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 of embroidery, írásos, particularly captured Sarah’s imagination. Using a straightforward open chain stitch in bold, graphic lines, the style was distinctively Hungarian, with Turkish-influenced motifs reflecting the region’s history. Although s...

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 knitter and yarn stasher, a comparably dispassionate sewist, a novice embroiderer, and a clumsy crocheter,” Nicole Nehrig has experienced this for herself. As a clinical psychologist, she used the t...

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 squares into adorable stuffed animals just a few months before a book about a drafting method for multishaft weaving, but Deb’s curiosity about all things...

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 “a tiny company in a tiny industry,” as Barry says, it has been decades since he built all the equipment himself. About four dozen employees manufacture looms, wheels, and other tools at the factory in Boulder...

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 followed by The Knitter's Book of Wool and The Knitter's Book of Socks. As she explored the yarn industry, Clara carefully maintained a journalist's independence, taking readers along with her as she learned how the yarns we love co...

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, knitters put down their needles on Sundays, but in time knitting became a pleasure rather than a job for Hazel. She started knitting every da...

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 a collaboration with Mother Nature.

Most yarn production farms consist of hundreds of animals of a single breed, enough to produce consistent batches of sin...

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 sought out a local teacher. But when she moved back to the United States and began a new life as a farmer, her backstrap weaving style hit a snag: sitting on the ground to we...

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 around them. We learning to fudge what we can’t fix, and we figure that’s the way knitting goes. We read our stitches, let the habits of our skilled hands take over, and integrate knitting...

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 Stone Glen. It was an audacious project: the school and accompanying store occupy a rural campus in southeastern Pennsylvania, with space for several classes and even on-site lodging...

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. And as at the North and South Poles, climate change is threatening the animals and people who call this region home.

To bring attention to...

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 over 37 years.

That love of antiques led Tom to accumulate a collection of historic coverlets and rag rugs, along with knowledge about...

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 decade on the staff of the magazine, she decided to devote herself to studying and writing about textiles, earning a PhD in Textiles and Clothing.

Although her initial interest was in writing, she discovered th...

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 potential of Faroese fiber. “We owe it to our past and our future to utilise the natural resources that we have, and on the Faroe Islands, that is wool,” she says.

The first project of the...

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 living museum on the grounds of what is now the Henry Ford Museum. Shay has combined curiosity, hard work, good fortune, and a...

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-and-white-spotted, two-to-four-horned heritage-breed sheep.

Although the flock lives full-time between Sacramento and the Bay Area, Meridian Jacobs get around—digitally, at least. When Robin starte...

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 for Food Knit-a-Thon. In its first 4 years, the effort has raised over $1.25 million for Feeding America, Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, and World Central Kitchen. 2025 is poised...

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 different approaches to the pin loom, eventually realizing that she needed a combination of plain and bias weaving in the same piece. Once she developed the method, she faced the challenge of making the lo...