Unraveling: What I Learned about Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater | 
pickThis hybrid narrative nonfiction/memoir is charming and engaging, and vaulted over my reflexive dislike of memoir. If the reflections of a woman who spent the COVID pandemic shearing a sheep, carding/spinning/dyeing the wool, and knitting it into a sweater sounds like your bag, check it out!
pickI loved the premise of this: during Covid, the author sets out to make a sweater from scratch. Not just knitting it, but going all the way back to the starting point by learning to shear a sheep—and then learning all the other steps in between. I expected more about the process of making, but there was a fairly even balance between the mistakes and triumphs of shearing, spinning, dyeing, and knitting, and the author‘s reflections along the way. ⤵️
pickCovid arrives and the author decides to make a sweater from scratch. From shearing the sheep, spinning and dyeing the wool, and making the sweater. I enjoyed her humor and the particular items she chose to go into depth on, especially color and the origin of particular colors (from bugs). The last quarter of the book got a bit bogged down, but overall I enjoyed it.
pickDuring the pandemic, Orenstein kept busy learning to make a sweater from scratch: from shearing the sheep, to spinning and dyeing the yarn, ending with designing and knitting the pattern. I was expecting the tale to be slightly stressful due to the time during which it was written; I wasn‘t expecting the story to focus so much on climate change. I‘m glad it did, despite the resulting heaviness. 👇🏻
“Impatience may be the enemy of perfection…but the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Today I learned that the witchy “eye of newt” isn‘t an amphibious ingredient at all; it‘s just a nickname for mustard seed!
🤯🔮🌼
I‘ve shared this piece of trivia far & wide. The only person who‘d encountered the factoid before was a college friend who works for the Commonwealth Shakespeare Co. (which I suspected might be the case).
pickPeggy Orenstein needed a COVID pandemic project, so she learned to shear a sheep named Martha, cleaned & carded the fleece, spun it into yarn, then learned how to colour the wool with natural dyes. Fortunately, she already knew how to knit. She did learn how to create her own pattern. The results aren‘t even remotely ugly, are they? In & around all this activity, Orenstein writes thoughtfully about grief, culture, technology & life. 🐑❤️
Friday Reads April 7: LGBTQ comics, LGBTQ poetry & LGBTQ picture book + textiles in fiction & nonfiction
https://youtu.be/pN4mp_TZ8Nk
#queer #booktube
pickTo me the perfect balance of smart, thoughtful person does a thing and tells you about it, and memoir/reflection on life, family, the world, etc. With good history bits mixed it. And a good length.
pickI‘m a fan of Peggy‘s writing about teens and parenting, so I was very interested to read about how she spent her pandemic. She‘s a knitter and had the idea to follow a sweater from sheep to dyeing to finished product. While learning to shear sheep, she expounded on animal welfare and the garment industry. Making her own dye led her to ponder the microclimates in her neighborhood. While knitting the final product, she reflected on her mom and dad.
pickI loved this book - the voice, the journey, the adventure of it all. I don‘t knit but found all of the story so accessible and relatable. Its a story of a knitting project, but it‘s also very much about community, the climate, fast fashion, the ways technologies change fashion, women‘s rights, and the meaning of home.
