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PODCAST

The Long Thread Podcast

Long Thread Media

The artists and artisans of the fiber world come to you in The Long Thread Podcast. Each episode features interviews with your favorite spinners, weavers, needleworkers, and fiber artists from across the globe. Get the inspiration, practical advice, and personal stories of experts as we follow the long thread.

leisure crafts

All Episodes

51:54

Spotlight Episode: Brown Sheep Company

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/07/06

Andrew Wells is the third generation of the iconic American yarn manufacturer Brown Sheep Company. Living near the family business outside Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, he grew up giving tours and sweeping the floors when his parents, Peggy and Robert Wells, ran the business. His grandfather, Harlan Brown, had been a sheep and lamb farmer before deciding to begin processing wool yarns, a business he eventually passed along to his daughter and son-in-law. (The company is named not for the color of the

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1:00:21

Kate Gagnon Osborn & Courtney Kelley, Kelbourne Woolens

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/06/29

Working together in a Philadelphia yarn store, Kate Gagnon Osborn and Courtney Kelley learned how to help customers choose the right yarn for a project, welcome in timid new knitters, and create samples to help move yarn out the door. They learned what didn’t work (donut-shaped balls of yarn that hopped off the shelves and tangled, patterns that used a few yards of a 100-gram skein) and what did (unfussy classic yarns, wearable sweaters, and lots of fun-to-knit hats). They founded Kelbourne Woolens

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39:11

Jess Zafarris, Author & Etymologist

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/06/15

If you knit, spin, sew, weave, or follow any crafty pursuit, you will not be surprised that many of our most common metaphors come from textiles. They are interwoven in our vocabulary, and whether you like to spin a yarn from words or fibers, you will recognize many of them. But then there are the words whose textile roots are less obvious: Rocket. Bombastic. And we’ve forgotten the regional roots of some kinds of fabric, where the skill and creativity refined in a particular place produced an

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59:56

Masey Kaplan & Jen Simonic, Loose Ends Project

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/06/01

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

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42:52

Eileen Lee: From Quilts to Jeans to Painted Warps...

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/05/18

A career professional at Levi Strauss & Company, Eileen Lee learned about dyeing, weaving, and sewing on an international scale: giant factories full of loud looms weaving 2/2 twill, pattern pieces cut out of four-foot-high stacks of cloth, and no possibility of adding a tuck here or a dart there without retooling. During her years in the industry, Eileen saw major shifts in the market for the company's signature product, as their target customer began to look elsewhere and their manufacturing

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55:22

Lilly Marsh, Custom Weaver

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/05/04

Lilly Marsh creates blankets, shawls, and other cloth, almost exclusively from local wool. Working closely with farmers and the nearby Battenkill Fiber Mill, she gets to know not only her neighbors but the fibers they grow: the surprisingly lovely wool from East Friesian sheep raised to produce milk, the springy Dorset crosses that are popular in the region, and other fibers of the Hudson Valley Textile Network. Formerly a shepherd herself, Lilly knows how important and unique this wool is to the

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53:55

Annie MacHale, Inkle Artist

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/04/20

The call of complexity draws some weavers to more shafts, more structures, more hand-manipulated techniques. For Annie MacHale, refining the techniques and celebrating the artistry of very simple bands has been a lifelong fascination. Starting when she first picked up a shuttle and inkle loom in her teens, Annie has worked in wool, cotton, and hemp, creating practical cloth that’s just a few inches wide.Any bandweaver has heard the question more times than they can count: “But what can you do with

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54:31

Alissa Allen, Mycopigments

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/04/06

“Rule number one: Never drink the dye bath.” Indigo and cochineal may be the most widely recognized natural dyes for many fiber artists, and there’s little temptation of sampling an indigo vat or pot of ground insects. But a simmering kettle of dye mushrooms or lichens? That might smell delicious, but if you’re in a class with Alissa Allen, it’s not soup you’re making—it’s an amazing range of colors. Depending on the species you find and the methods of extraction, you may get not only earthy

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57:41

Sally Fox, Colored Cotton Breeder

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/03/23

In a period when agriculture moved toward chemicals, genetic engineering, and monoculture, Sally Fox decided to explore what could happen if she collaborated with nature instead of fighting it. With an academic background in entomology, she studied ways to minimize the amount of pesticides needed to grow crops, and the more she saw the effects of those chemicals, the more she wanted to steer clear. Looking to avoid synthetic dyes, she was intrigued when she came across a few seeds of naturally

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59:37

Spotlight Episode: Yarn Barn of Kansas

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/03/16

When Susan Bateman first opened Yarn Barn of Kansas in 1971, a woman starting a small business couldn’t get a credit card in her own name. Weavers like her had a hard time finding yarns, tools, and other supplies, some of which were only available from overseas, and she thought there must be an opportunity to bring fiber artists more of what they needed. Susan and her husband, Jim, have spent decades building the kind of store she wanted to see when she was learning to weave and hoping to grow her

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38:00

Rebecca Mezoff (classic)

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/03/09

There may be no other type of textile that is more art and craft at the same time than tapestry weaving. Tapestry allows the weaver to create images with simple tools, but the skills and materials in tapestry are generally hard-wearing. You might find a tapestry on the floor as a rug as often as on a wall as a piece of art. Rebecca Mezoff became a tapestry weaver after a career in occupational therapy, finding that it suited her artistically and let her use other skills she loved, such as

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56:11

Hannah Thiessen Howard, Slow Knitting

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/02/24

For Hannah Thiessen Howard, slow knitting isn’t about the speed of making stitches or finishing projects. Swift and leisurely knitters alike can embrace the purpose and experience of knitting and how it connects crafter to community. Selecting materials, choosing projects, and approaching your work with an open mind all contribute to a meaningful knitting life.Knitting can offer refuge, inspiration, and self-expression. It can also be a step, large or small, toward bringing about the kind of world

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49:26

Keisha Cameron, High Hog Farm

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/02/10

Although she grew up in the freezing winters of New York, Keisha Cameron and her husband decided to move their young family to a peri-urban spot outside Atlanta, Georgia, to set down roots and rebuild their connection to the land. They began with raising what their family needed for food and other daily necessities, but over the past decade, High Hog Farm has developed stocks of rare-breed sheep, angora rabbits, and chickens. In their gardens, the family cultivate produce as well as medicinal and

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42:08

Justin Squizzero, The Burroughs Garret

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/01/27

Justin Squizzero loves exploring the frontiers of technology, seeing how he can tune a piece of equipment to produce a complex textile. The technology that fascinates him reached its peak before the 20th century. Weaving on an old loom doesn’t mean trying to turn back time, though—it means choosing the most refined technology to create the handwoven fabrics that he envisions. If a modern tool is better than the historic one (like the laser cutter that produced the small metal rings called mails,

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35:43

Kaffe Fassett, Artist & Color Master

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2024/01/13

Kaffe Fassett doesn’t play favorites in his work—he doesn’t have a favorite medium, and he definitely doesn’t have a favorite color. What he has is a powerful delight in combining the simple elements of color, line, and image, and a passion for helping other people share in that joy. For someone whose career is inextricably linked to stitching, his needlework techniques are surprisingly simple. “I’m never interested in technical acrobatics,” he says. “I think that color is what is fabulous, and

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50:42

Stephany Wilkes, Shearer, Wool Classer & Author

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2023/12/30

Between the sheep in the field and the lovely yarn in your hands lies the complex network of the wool industry. Fiber must be scoured, spun, and maybe dyed, and it all starts with shearing. Attending a Fibershed symposium in 2012, Stephany Wilkes was surprised to learn that one of the barriers to local fiber production was a lack of trained shearers. A knitter and software developer, she had no hands-on livestock experience when she signed up for a shearing class through an extension center and

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56:42

Lisa Chamoff, Indie Untangled

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2023/12/16

What do you get when a crafter who loves colorful hand-dyed yarns (and hates stalking shop updates) crosses paths with a fresh, new yarn producer? Like many of her knitter friends in 2013, Lisa Chamoff was enchanted by the artful and expressive work of the independent dyers whose skeins were cropping up around the yarn world. Shoppers found new favorites by word of mouth, hearing about a new colorway or restock here and there. At the same time, talented dyers with fledgling businesses relied on that

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50:44

Spotlight Episode: Suri Network

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2023/12/09

[Sponsored Content] If you’ve been weaving, knitting, or playing with fiber for long—or if you’ve passed some fiber animals in a field—you probably think you know what an alpaca looks like: a fluffy creature with a long neck and spade-shaped ears. But you may not know that there’s a different kind of alpaca, one whose coat grows in long, silky ringlets instead of an allover fluffy halo. Suri alpacas make up a small fraction of the alpacas, both worldwide and in the United States, but their special

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44:31

Sarah Neubert, Fiber Art & Radical Repair

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2023/12/02

The scale of Sarah Neubert’s work varies from miniature to monumental, from small pieces such as earrings to room-sized installations. She dreams of creating entire woven environments that are sensory and tactile, like cocoons or sanctuaries of fiber. Working on a large scale allows her to explore new techniques and push the boundaries of her art. However, she also appreciates the sense of accomplishment that comes from creating small, wearable pieces. Her classes at the upcoming Weave Together

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1:13:51

Jane Cooper, The Lost Flock

The Long Thread Podcast ·

2023/11/18

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

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131 results

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