Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater by Peggy Orenstein

Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater Reviews

• 
  Jessica

  So this may be one of my favorite books of the year, maybe of all time. I picked it up because I am also a knitter, and I love reading about when people tackle a huge personal project (like reading the Dictionary, or cooking their way through a whole cookbook, hiking the PCT, etc), but this book is so much more. There is the personal project and journey, but there is also the microhistory of fiber and textiles - both generally and through the lens of women, a look at the social issues of our time (climate change, racial justice, women's rights), and the very personal contemplations of her own life.
  
  I haven't read anything else by Peggy Orenstein, but after this book I will be. Her writing and tone hit a sweet spot that made this book feel expansive, but personal. I connected with this book on many levels, and learned so much both as a lover of fiber but also as a human learning to be a better human. I truly love this book, and I want to have everyone I know read it so we can talk about it.
• 
  Elyse Walters

  Audiobook….read by Peggy Orenstein
  …..5 hours and 52 minutes
  
  ‘People’ magazine got this sentence, right:
  “Orenstein is such a breezy, funny writer, it’s easy to forget she’s an important thinker too”.
  
  Peggy reminded me that the most unforgettable - life changing year of my life, 2020, had to do with *breath*…
  …Covid, (the painful memory, of the insurmountable number of people on ventilators that couldn’t breathe….
  …George Floyd who couldn’t breathe….
  …The horrific California wildfires where the air quality was that was harmful to our lungs,
  and
  … the holding (chocking) my breath hoping and waiting for a new President.
  
  Peggy highlighted, an important, contemplating topic, about the importance of learning practical skills. Simply an academic education is not going to be useful in our future.
  As Anton Chekhov said:
  “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice”.
  Building skills, spinning yarn, beer brewing, sewing, cooking, carpentry, basic health knowledge, lessons that can help another person, digital competence, reading and math skills, communication & collaboration skills, gardening, etc. > useful skills making one indispensable to others.
  
  Gun violence, global warming, safety, protections, healthcare needs, mental health, child labor, poverty, racism, misogyny, food resources, refugee rights, Covid, disability rights, media security, pollution, water supply, , LGBTQ rights, cyber rights and security, corruption, fair, working conditions, a dying planet > these are some of the issues denying us of our past, and of our future.
  
  Peggy brought transformative thought to crafting — her new skill of shearing sheep, dying wool, spinning yard — etc.
  as well revealing fears, anxieties, and phobias we are facing — since covid and years to come.
  
  Loved this audiobook!
  Love Peggy!
  
• 
  Lark of The Bookwyrm's Hoard

  [I have not yet read the book, so this is not a review.]
  
  I am a spinner and knitter. I have attempted to process a fleece. I'm approaching my 60s, I am an empty-nester, and I am facing my own parents' inevitable decline. Like pretty much everyone in this country (and many others), I spent the first years of the pandemic mostly isolated, except from my husband; to stay sane, I baked, spun, and knit. And much like Ms. Orrenstein, I grieved the life I had before the pandemic, and grappled with issues of sustainability, climate change, racial inequalities, the political climate, women's rights, and technology.
  
  I am, in fact, the perfect audience for this book. I can't wait to read it.
• 
  Susan Tunis

  Not only is Peggy Orenstein a skilled writer, she's a charming companion with whom to spend a few hours. While this will obviously be of greater interest to the craft-inclined, there are pleasures to be found in these pages for all. There is so much more than knitting. Ms. Orenstein has a gift for the quirky side tangent, and you are sure to learn a thing or two in these pages. And her meditations on the recent pandemic and family have universal appeal.
  
  Ms. Orenstein is coming to speak at our bookstore in a few days. Will she bring the sweater? Will she be wearing it!
• 
  Rebecca

  2.5 stars rounded up. When she focuses on the craft and knowledge involved to go sheep to sweater and how this helped her understand fashion and community it was fascinating. The rest of the book meanders into occasional depth concerning family and stages of life and shallow digressions on Patriarchy and religion domineering women. I wish she'd spoken more about her Jewish heritage and religious beliefs and how those impact her political views etc. Some of her jabs at Holy Scriptures appear to be at odds with those writings, and yet she doesn't think so, I guess. Is the cognitive dissonance there because of me having a different understanding of those verses as a Christian? These portions felt shallower than some of her other sections of the book. I also thought the book dragged in places. Not a bad read but also not one I plan on revisiting.
• 
  Bonny

  I admire Peggy Orenstein for learning how to shear sheep, spin yarn, and dye during the height of the pandemic. She was already a knitter, so that part of the process came more easily, but the rest of it was a sometimes back-breaking, difficult, and frustrating journey. Unraveling is a combination of her memoir, a history of "women's work" and how to make a sweater from scratch. At the same time, the author was dealing with her mother's death, her father's decline into dementia, a threatening wildfire season in California, and the imminent departure of her daughter for college. Women at that stage tend to ask, "Who am I?" and "What's next?" and I think she gained some answers in her process and writing this book. By the way, she did not make the World's Ugliest Sweater. I had to search online for a photo of it, but any knitter would recognize the hard work and lessons learned in making it, and I think Ms. Orenstein should be proud.

  "I never did ask how she learned to knit-her own mother, an immigrant from the nebulous region of Eastern Europe known only as "the Old Country," did not, to my knowledge-so the answer disappeared at my mom's death, along with those to so many questions that, in the self-absorbed ways of daughters, it never occurred to me to ask. Mom, were you happy? Did you have any regrets? Were you ever lonely? Who did you talk to when things got hard? How did you survive parenting a teenage girl? And how, as that girl prepared to leave home, did you ever let her go? I don't know, at any rate, that I would have wanted to hear the answers, that I would have listened. I may have griped to my friends that my mother didn't see me, not the real me, but did I ever truly see her? Did I even try?"
• 
  Dramatika

  Just a book to pass time while travelling,waiting in line etc. Some interesting facts about wool, sheeps and the impact of dye used in fabrics and fast fashion in general. Nothing too deep so just 3 stars because I like the author!
• 
  amanda

  Such a SHONDA that Peggy has willfully hurt Aboubakar Fofana with her cultural appropriation and artist appropriation by publishing the indigo dying process that she learned in Aboubakar’s class. She did not have the consent of the artist to publish his teachings. Theft is theft, and Peggy has stolen an artists process without his consent and published it in this book for her personal profit.
• 
  Lily Feinberg

  I have been an incredible fan of Peggy Orenstein’s for so long now (her book Girls and Sex changed my life), and that was BEFORE I found out that she wrote this book and was a lifelong knitter. Needless to say, I’m obsessed.
  
  I gave this 4 stars because, as is often the case for me, I find nonfiction to read slightly slower and be not quite as gripping as fiction, but truly, this book was wonderful, beautiful, meaningful, all the words.
  
  Not only was it an accurate and moving reflection of the frustration and fear that we all felt during the pandemic, this book taught me a tremendous amount about the garment industry, fast fashion, and the history of knitting and fiber crafts.
  
  I will admit, would this book have been as meaningful to me was I not someone whose life has truly been changed by knitting? Probably not. But as someone who that has proven true for, this book was a glorious ode to the craft. I wept and laughed, and most of all I finished it feeling extremely proud to be the knitter I am🫶
• 
  Whitney

  When I first started this book I honestly thought I was going to give up on it. The first few chapters were really preachy about the ecological side of clothing (and equating it with the need to eat organic locally-produced food), which came across as very entitled because the author comes from a place of privilege being a rich white woman living in Northern California. This section of the book almost put me off reading the rest, but I’m glad I kept reading. The author went into a lot of the history of spinning, dyeing, and knitting in the later chapters, and discussing it as traditional women’s work, which I really enjoyed reading. She even touched on knitting activism.
  
  I thought the book had redeemed itself until the author got to the knitting part of her journey and basically claimed that English-style knitting (my preferred style) was bad and she refused to teach her daughter to knit that way. This REALLY rubbed me the wrong way because I firmly believe that you can knit however you want to knit and you are not required to learn a “better” way of knitting (for non-knitters, the only thing that continental-style knitting does “better” than English is that typically it’s a faster way to knit). And there is NO reason why I need to learn a faster way of knitting when by its very nature, knitting is SLOW fashion.
• 
  Lisa Wisniewski

  The author made me wish I had learned to shear a sheep, make yarn from its wool, dye it and then knit a sweater during the pandemic lockdown. It was a delightful read and I learned a lot along the way.
• 
  Deidra

  2.5 rounded up. Not what I anticipated so did not enjoy.
• 
  Tania P

  I enjoyed how the author wove together the narrative of her life lived during the pandemic and before/beyond with that of her journey to knit a sweater right from shearing the sheep through carding and spinning and dyeing the wool. Her explorations of the history and impact of spinning, dyeing, clothing manufacturing were new and interesting to me. An insightful book and, for me at this stage in my life, very relatable.
• 
  Jen

  In this delightful new title from the author of Girls & Sex , this pandemic memoir explores Orenstein’s journey from farm to sweater and all the thoughts/fears/anxiety she has while on this journey, from grieving the loss of her mom to thinking through the meaning of keeping a home.
  I’m rather a fan of the “tiny memoir” as I think of it. I love when an author explores the origins of different color dyes, or looks at the energy usage required to make a certain fabric. Add that she’s looking at all of this through a feminist knitter lens, and I’m on board! If you like some of these things too, then this one’s for you.
• 
  Jan

  Involuntarily learned more than I ever wanted to about clothes and knitting. Some was very interesting though overall there was too much history. I would have preferred less history and more personal. I honestly nearly quit this with less than 20 pages to go.
• 
  Jojobooks Higgins

  A spectacular read! Highly recommend.
• 
  Jackie

  I really enjoyed this book. A lot of what it presented, I hadn’t thought about before, and it was nice to remember what the spinning and knitting process taught me. One day, maybe I’ll have time again.
• 
  Jill

  This book weaves in social commentary, personal stories, and history, so seamlessly through her journey of making her own sweater from sheep to garment. Loved every minute of it!
• 
  Carol N

  In this short, less than 200 paged memoir, “Unraveling,” its writer, Peggy Orenstein, is housebound during the 2020 pandemic, and finds herself in need of a project. She decides to create a sweater starting from scratch. Before she knits the infamous sweater, she learns how to shear the sheep, hand process, card, spin, and dye the wool. The storyline is stuffed with bits and pieces on the history of fabric, clothing, women’s roles sprinkled with Orenstein’s thoughts, feelings and experiences.
  
  As an experienced knitter, I was fascinated with the sections she focused on the sweater project . However, I was disappointed in the weakest part that mingled family issues and difficult childhood memories with her passion for knitting.
  
• 
  Janelle

  This book is totally up my alley. The premise is this: during the COVID-19 pandemic, an experienced knitter and writer levels up by learning to shear a sheep, spin the wool, dye the wool, and knit a sweater. The resulting book is a blend of narrative DIY, sheep/wool nonfiction, and personal memoir about living through the early part of the pandemic.
  
  The book is a slim 224 pages in hardcover (though I read the ebook version on Libby), and Orenstein's breezy style makes it a quick read. I'm somewhat familiar with the territory she covers, yet there were moments that stuck out for me. For instance, I would have loved to spend more time with Lora the shearer, who was told as a child that she could do anything she wanted with a college degree (which she earned) and then decided to devote her life to a skills-oriented career (for which that degree isn't needed). The U.S. and indeed the entire world is short on shearers right now, and we would all benefit from having more energetic and able-bodied people learn this skill. I wasn't at all surprised to (re)read that the Mendocino Shearing School is tough to get a spot in (of course classes were completely cancelled during the early part of the pandemic)... but then taking precious lessons from a shearer who could have given them to someone who actually wanted to shear sheep seemed a little odd. I get it, it's a narrative choice, and perhaps it was a calculated choice on Lora's part to bring awareness to this situation through a book by a well-known author. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but this part just seemed a little "off" to me. For more on shearing, I recommend
  Raw Material: Working Wool in the West.
  
  Orenstein was extraordinarily fortunate to arrange private spinning lessons with Kristine Vejar of A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland. Wow, talk about a celebrity connection. (I would have predicted she'd ask for Kristine's help with natural dyeing, but that went in another direction). I especially appreciated some of the historical research that Orenstein shared in this section. There are a lot of references to spinning in mythology, which many people know. But this passage is so well put and will definitely make me gaze upon my wheel a bit differently next time I sit down to spin! (Side note: she chose the same wheel I have, the Schacht Ladybug.)

  Making something from nothing is the quintessential magic of women, whether turning fiber to thread or flour to bread or engaging in the ultimate creative act: conjuring new humans from nowhere at all. What could be more elemental, more mystical, more divine, than that? No wonder, on a spinning wheel, you feed your newly spun yarn onto the ever-swelling bobbin through "the orifice": a hole in a wooden piece that is called "the maiden," which itself rests atop "the mother of all." (63)

  
  
  I was surprised to read about the "troubling past" of angora - I did not know about the soft bunnies' connection to Nazi Heinrich Himmler and the death camps. Yikes. The section where I learned the most was the chapter about color. Did you know the ancient Greeks did not see perceive the color blue? Total news to me. I am reminded of the disagreements about color that regularly occur in my own household - just yesterday two of us did not see the same color on a map, AT ALL (and these two did not include the color-blind family member!).
  
  For me, the weakest part of the book is the family memoir angle. I'm not sure that blending memories about a difficult childhood with this particular passion project worked super well. I am completely baffled at the idea that knitting in the English style (throwing) is so "wrong" that Orenstein refused to teach her daughter to knit, opting instead to direct her to a relative who knits in the "continental" (picking) style. I mean, what?!?? Orenstein narratively tangles knitting technique with the issue of food shaming; this snarl is unnecessary and just off. I mean, knitting in the English style is not the same level as disordered eating. It's just not. It's not even wrong. Period.
  
  The story drifts at the end when it is time to actually knit the sweater. Orenstein describes herself as a lifelong, experienced knitter, so I was puzzled that she went to "internationally known pattern designer and coach" Frenchie Danoy for help with a pattern. There are literally tens of thousands of patterns already available, including many approaches designed for "any weight" yarn (meaning you can make the pattern conform to the yarn you have, rather than trying to make yarn that conforms to an existing pattern). In the end, she knits a top-down raglan, which is a very simple sweater - completely appropriate for the yarn she made. I just don't get why she didn't realize this while she was spinning and dyeing the yarn. It doesn't even sound like the custom pattern was all that great (the arms are too tight and must be reworked). And somehow, no one put together that if you have 3 pounds of yarn and you use it all, your sweater will also be a very heavy 3 pounds. She writes:

  The sweater is warm, which I expected given its bulk, but also surprisingly physically heavy - nearly three pounds, which is two more than the thickest sweaters in my closet. I'm not sure why that is, though I did use every speck of Martha's fleece. At best, I would wear it as an outer layer, in lieu of a jacket. When I visit Minnesota. In the dead of February. Because there is no way I would have cause to wear this thing in California. Maybe the weightiness is appropriate. It is, after all, carrying a lot: my hopes and fears for the future; my commitment to thinking more consciously about clothing (as well as other) consumption; the devastation of the pandemic; the grief over my mom's death, over the slow, dripping loss of my dad; my apprehension about the fires and the advancing climate crisis; the anticipatory loneliness of the empty nest. It's all knit in there. This whole damned year. No wonder the result feels like lead. (167)

  
  
  The subtitle of the book is "What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater" (question: why'd she skip over spinning, a super important step?) and many knitterly reactions to this book have reacted to the "world's ugliest sweater" claim. Consensus in the community seems to be that the sweater is not, in fact, "ugly" (
  judge for yourself) and that it represents a lot of learning in a beautiful way. It might not be wearable due to its thickness and weight, but it is not ugly. I suspect that some editor striving for the clickbait-iest title won that wording battle (if indeed there was a battle).
  
  Now, I'm off to my wheel...
• 
  Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir

  When I first laid eyes on the complete title of UNRAVELING, I remember actually articulating inside my head, “Oh goody, this looks like fun!” I was in for quite a surprise, one that took me far beyond mere fun.
  
  I’ve grown up (and older) with a healthy and loving respect for all forms of handmade fiber art and fabric-crafting. As a youngster I was in awe of my Scottish grandmother, who could literally do with flax what Peggy Orenstein learns how to do with wool, taking it from field to woven linen. Neither process is easy --- physically, scientifically or artistically.
  
  Orenstein is best known for half-a-dozen edgy, relevant and accessible books about gender culture, feminism, social transformation and youth self-esteem. But as with so many authors and artists, the COVID-19 pandemic challenged and detoured her creativity into a wholly unforeseen direction. As she describes in forthright and often self-effacing prose, trending pandemic pursuits such as growing one’s own vegetables or getting into sourdough starters didn’t hold much appeal.
  
  But her knowledge of how disastrously fast fashion, massive clothing waste and fabric industry pollution are decimating Earth’s resources coalesced into the personal push-back project that became UNRAVELING. She would embark on a journey of “slow fashion” by finding people willing to give her socially distanced lessons on shearing sheep, turning the fleece into spun yarn, naturally dyeing that yarn, designing a basic sweater pattern, and knitting it into a wearable garment.
  
  Orenstein was not only successful in completing what became an arduous personal journey (actually, more like a pilgrimage). She also draws into her narrative many threads of thought and feeling that the sheer physical demands of the project allowed her mind to work on at a more human pace.
  
  Between the opening pages that get the sheep-shearing over with (a far too slow process for “Martha” the ewe!) and the last chapter, in which a very rustic-looking but gorgeously colored sweater finally gets knitted, UNRAVELING reflects on the motley history of fabric dyeing; the social stratification of certain shades; the history of cottage-to-factory fabric production; the subversive power of female fiber artisans; the commodification of human creativity; and a surprisingly powerful range of related issues that speak deeply to the 21st-century psyche.
  
  In that vein I was struck by Orenstein’s use, or coinage, of the term “craftivism” as a new form of activism in which the work of our hands energizes movements and issues far larger than ourselves. Remember the countless pink “pussy hats” knitted by women to express outrage at then-President Trump’s demeaning attitude toward them? And that is only one of a number of potent examples she brings to bear on the big picture in which her brave sweater project has such an important role.
  
  Orenstein accomplishes all of this against the geographic backdrop of living in a particularly fire-prone area of California (where everyone has a “go bag” packed for sudden evacuations) and the personal scenario of a parent about to become an empty-nester. And, of course, there’s COVID, which is still with us.
  
  In the end I wasn’t that far off the mark in anticipating a fun read, but Orenstein gave me a much deeper and more tangible experience of “fun” than I ever imagined. I just have two tiny regrets. First, while a small photo of the finished sweater appears on the back cover, Orenstein is never shown actually wearing it. Second, I wish my wonderful spinning, weaving and dyeing Scottish grandmother was still around, so I could share my copy of UNRAVELING with her. She would have loved it!
  
  Reviewed by Pauline Finch
• 
  Primrosebarks

  I mistakenly thought this book would be light-hearted and amusing. According to the publisher, it's a "fun and lively memoir".
  
  IMO, it is not.
  
  Neither the publicist nor I paid attention to the title:"Unraveling: What I Learned About Life"...stop right there! The author was Explaining Her Version of Life. Do you want to listen or read anyone's opinion of What Life Is About? Not me.
  
  This book struck me as dark, filled with cringe-worthy preaching, detailed but inadequate "how to" lectures, a personal sharing of grief and fear, and monumental awkwardness. This book hopped around disparate topics without the capacity to tie them all together. It read like a very personal journal---a place where you can fully express yourself and be as messy about it as you like.
  
  Clearly the title was a warning, but I missed it, and so I was disappointed.
  
  ETA: There is a link in another recent review to the photo of the "world's ugliest sweater" (I was curious about that, but no, it is not ugly at all. Just unwearable.) So much of what the author aspired to was at odds to me, an avid knitter/spinner/with several raw fleeces turned into sweaters. But her odd insistence on learning to shear sheep, dangerous and possibly traumatic to the sheep, simply for a sweater struck me as inconsiderate and unthoughtful; the incomplete information on preparing fleece for spinning, the sad instructions she was given for spinning, the high demand for water with natural dyes, and as so wisely pointed out in other reviews, the unnecessary insistence on creating a sweater pattern that turned out to be unwearable in the author's home environment: all of this struck me as a desperate attempt to meet a contractual deadline for another book, come hell or high water.
  
  Beyond that, the historical digressions were interesting, and I appreciated the author's references at the end of the book. But the political polemics simply make me want to weep with embarrassment, reflecting the author's lack of understanding of the state of our country outside of Berkeley, Ca..
  
  Ultimately, I was heartened that there are still dreamers out there like Peggy Orenstein, but I am worried that such dreamers blithely blast past valid concerns such as responsible animal husbandry and ecological issues. The food issue is far from being settled; the food deserts are not being addressed; the inequity of health is an urgent issue. Incivility and the attack on educational institutions without cause is rampant. Preparing and knitting yarn and philosophizing about it, sadly, doesn't move the marker for better health for our nation and people.
  
  Again, it is a book more like a private journal, which gives the writer a safe space to emote. All the elements were there, but the author failed to bring them together into a cogent narrative.
• 
  Caroline

  Orenstein writes with such a frank, funny, and engaging voice. She raises lots of big issues raised here and she could dive in and write a longer book about many of them but she keeps it moving and keeps it (mostly) pretty light, a smart calculus, I think, favoring a broader audience and the possibility of changing some minds. Which isn’t to imply the book isn’t substantive; her rundown of the way yarn work has woven its way into the English language is worth the read alone. While she’s narrating her story of learning how to sheer a sheep, process its wool into yarn, dye it, and knit it up into a sweater, while she’s grappling with the pandemic and her daughter’s growing up and away and her father’s decline and her grief from her mother’s death, she also writes fiercely about climate change, the union movement, political activism, and women’s rights, plus she offers a spirited defense of the source of all this (sheep: not as dopey as you thought!). I learned a ton and enjoyed every page.
  
  A couple passages:
  "Somewhere along the line, some clever soul discovered that twirling together strands of the mouflon’s coat created strong, sturdy cord. It is part of what Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a linguist and textile archaeologist, calls “the String Revolution,” a technological leap as influential as, if less celebrated than, the harnessing of steam during the Industrial Revolution. In her history of ancient women’s work, she writes that string (first derived from plants 120,000 or so years ago) not only resulted in a literal fabrication of fabric, it also allowed humans to tie things together, which meant carrying more. It allowed us to bind, to tether, to develop next-level tools, such as snares to catch animals or nets to catch fish. Barber goes so far as to speculate that — move over, fire — the humble string was “the unseen weapon that allowed the human race to conquer the earth.”
  
  A “crone” is said to be any woman over 50 (?!) and, as such, is usually portrayed as haglike: disagreeable, malicious, frightening. But crones are also symbols of wisdom and justice. There is no male equivalent, perhaps because aging men do not threaten the social order the way women do if we stop giving a fuck and embrace the power in our release from the confines (whether enforced or chosen) of conventional femininity.
  
  “Back when all fabric was locally dyed, you could tell where a person was from by the shade of their clothing.”
  
• 
  Zibby Owens

  During Covid, the author decided to make a sweater from scratch while dealing with her mother's death, her daughter's leaving, and her father's illness. This book is really about confronting midlife as a woman when facing an "empty nest" and the decline of elderly parents. It's also about relationships between mothers and daughters and fathers and daughters. It is also about the history of women's work and textiles.
  
  The author was so funny, and I loved her sense of humor. She wrote, "That night in bed, I do the New York Times spelling bee on my phone, poking at my keyboard to make as many words as possible from a hive of seven letters. When I hit the number needed to reach the genius designation, I flip the screen around to show Steven. 'The thing is,' I tell him, 'I'm not really enjoying the game. I feel kind of anxious until and unless I make a genius. Then instead of feeling happy, I'm just relieved not to have failed, so it's never really fun.' He glances up from his book. 'That sounds about right with your personality.' 'Yeah,' I agree abstractedly, then turn to him. 'Wait, what do you mean?' 'You're always trying to prove something unnecessary that no one cares about to nobody in particular.'" Then you say, "It's true. I am an incessant seeker of validation, perpetually worried, despite my age and relative success, about missing the mark, about not meeting unspoken expectations, about getting an A in whatever there is to get an A in, about how my work will be judged rather than what engaging in it means to me. Deep down, I know that's a trap, one that sabotages creative thinking. Maybe that is part of what draws me to this eccentric project, the relief, the excuse, the joy of incompetence."
  
  To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
  
  https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
• 
  Dorothea

  Oh. My. Goodness!!! My first 5-star book of 2023!!
  
  This review is written just after finishing the audiobook. I have many feelings and so much to say that I cannot get into words, properly!! I have read several of Peggy Orenstein's books, but this is the first audiobook.
  
  Honestly, I didn't really know what the book was about - I hadn't read the subtitle. I just saw that there was a new Peggy Orenstein book. None of the subtitles really appealed to me especially shearing sheep, UGH! I had enjoyed the author's previous books so much that I decided to read this book regardless of the topic. Not surprisingly, the author writes beautifully about shearing sheep (yes, shearing sheep), carding, dyeing, and knitting a sweater (I do not knit or crochet, YET). But it is not really about the sweater - it is so much more. Life, death, family, and so many emotions.
  
  This book touched me in many ways - very profoundly at times. Yes, there was that subtitle, but it wasn't what the book was about at all. If you dig deeper, it was about a woman who is VERY similar to me - white, married to an Asian man, with a bi-racial daughter living in California during the horrifying time of COVID. It really was the author's journey trying to balance life during COVID and a horrible time with political uncertainty and a severe drought in California. Peggy is searching for purpose after raising a daughter headed to college and mourning the passing of a mother and the long-distance caring for an elderly parent - "sandwich life". Peggy is in the same life space as me - daughter in college, empty-nesting. I could viscerally understand and appreciate all the underlying asides of her book. It was so saddening to feel her father wasting away from dementia and it brought me back to when my great-uncle was experiencing the same life journey.
  
  HIGHLY RECOMMEND (don't be put off by the title/subtitle)!!!!
  
  
• 
  Karen

  In 2020, as Covid loomed on the horizon, as wildfires threatened her California home, as worry and fear became her daily friend, and her daughter was about to leave the nest, Peggy Orenstein had the deep need to trace a sweater from sheep to finished product. The idea of shearing a sheep, spinning and dying its wool, and making her first sweater was not new to her, but now it seemed imperative.
  
  With the country on lockdown, finding classes in shearing, not only few and far between in the best of times, but difficult to get into, Orenstein found a small sheep ranch and a person to teach her. From this point, we watch every painful step of the learning process. She tells in humorous detail how she manages to wrangle her sheep into position, just as the sheep breaks free. Finally, she manages to shear the few sheep chosen for her - but that is just the beginning.
  
  Each step in the process is introduced with an interesting history and stories of methodology. And...not a single process goes smoothly.
  
  Orenstein is entertaining and amusing. There is not a dull moment here. You do not have to want to do a single one of her tasks; after all, although I knit and crochet, I have no interest in shearing, no need to clean and spin the wool into a yarn, no patience for dying the wool, and a very clear knowledge of my poor math skills, (which would be a problem in the design process.)
  
  I am happy to simply love yarn.
  
  I highly recommend this delightful book, and I am pleased with how much I learned.