Clara Parkes - Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool — at Politics and Prose at The Wharf

Parkes is a self-described “yarn whisperer” who teaches, practices, and writes about knitting. She follows her bestselling Knitlandia with a wide-ranging account of how a 676-pound bale of fleece becomes salable yarn. Visiting upstate New York sheep farms, a Texas scouring plant, and a Maine dye  house, Parkes describes how wool is shorn and then sorted; shows how the wool is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins; and introduces some of the many shepherds, dyers, spinners, and innumerable other workers who play valuable roles in the once-thriving, now fading, American wool industry.