The Long Thread Podcast

Book Club Podcast: What lesser-known treasures do Yarn Barn fiber artists love to share? Susan and Melissa share some of their favorites in weaving, spinning, and knitting. Liz Gipson drops by to talk about one of her books that Susan and Melissa adore.

Book-loving crafters generally have a few special titles tucked on the shelf between the major must-have references: a self-published monograph, a slim paperback, or an in-depth look at an esoteric technique. In this episode, Susan Bateman and Melissa Parsons return with more hidden gems from the shelves at Yarn Barn of Kansas. Special guest Liz Gipson also joined us to talk about her own book on choosing yarn.

Multishaft Weaving

Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns by Norma Smayda, Gretchen White, Jody Brown, and Katharine Schelleng

This delightful collection of overshot patterns are refreshingly short-repeat and often asymmetrical, a playful and inspiring way to experiment with a traditional structure. Melissa’s so enthusiastic about the book that she loves to introduce it to any weaver.

Krokbragd: How to Design & Weave by Debbie Greenlaw

Friendly and accessible, this introduction to the colorful Scandinavian weft-faced structure covers both rigid-heddle and multishaft looms. The book includes several projects, including an irresistibly cute farm sampler.

Krokbragd: Contemporary Weaving with Colour by Angie Parker

A more technical take on krokbragd, this is aimed at weavers who already have some experience under their belt, with a more contemporary design sensibility and beautiful photography throughout.

M’s + O’s: A Contemporary Look at a Traditional Weave Structure on 4-shafts by Suzi Ballenger

This brand-new 70-page monograph invites weavers to take a fresh look at an underexplored structure. Ballenger’s examples and designs show M’s and O’s with contemporary style and unexpected laciness. Although M’s and O’s isn't generally Melissa’s favorite structure, this book inspires her to take another look.

Inkle & Tablet Weaving

In Celebration of Plain Weave by Annie MacHale

With a color theory explanation specifically for inkle weaving and information on designing beautiful bands, this spiral-bound color study is a must for bandweavers even before you get to the 200 pattern charts. Melissa and Susan especially love MacHale’s asymmetrical designs.

Please Weave a Message by Linda Hendrickson

An entire book of graphed-out alphabets for tablet weaving, using as few as 24 to 52 cards, perfect for weaving a name or message into a keepsake band—especially good for handwoven gifts!

Rigid Heddle

Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom by Betty Davenport

Decades ahead of its time and now in its eleventh printing, this book walks rigid-heddle weavers through pickup, deflected weft, and other structures well beyond plain weave.

A Weaver’s Guide to Yarn by Liz Gipson

Teacher Liz Gipson gathered her thoughts on yarns into a practical framework for choosing your materials by need rather than guesswork, including a fiber checklist and a helpful “decoding yarn information” section. Written especially for rigid-heddle weavers, this is a book Melissa would hand to every beginning weaver.

A special guest this episode, Liz joined the conversation to talk about how reader questions and teaching experience helped her write the book that weavers need.

Finishing

Finishes in the Ethnic Tradition by Suzanne Baizerman and Karen Searle

Rescued from out of print, this illustrated guide goes far past the overhand knot, gathering fringe, wrapped-edge, and embellishment techniques from weaving traditions worldwide.

Knitting

Barbara Walker’s Treasury Series (A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury, and A Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns)

Full of ideas to design and customize plain knitting projects, Barbara Walker’s iconoc treasuries give knitters permission to create. These four hefty stitch dictionaries include hundreds of charted designs you can drop into a project of your choosing.

The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd

Written to pair perfectly with a stitch dictionary, this book turns "I love this yarn but have no pattern for it" into a finished sweater, sock, or hat. Ann Budd offers designs for gauges from 3 to 7 stitches per inch and child to adult sizes.

Reversible Knitting by Cecelia Campochiaro

A stitch dictionary where every pattern looks as good from the back as the front! This collection of motifs is ideal for scarves, blankets, and anything meant to be seen from both sides.

The Wonder of Wool: A Knitter’s Guide to Pure Breed Sheep by Justine Lee and Jess Morency

Dramatic black-and-white sheep portraits pair with breed-by-breed spinning and knitting notes in this exploration of British heritage wools. The book also includes full patterns built around specific wools.

Spinning

A Spinner’s Dozen: 14 Darn Useful Tools by Stephenie Gaustad

A charming hand-illustrated case for the spinning tools worth hunting down in antique stores, this is Stephenie Gaustad’s fun and gentle nudge to explore the old spinning ways and discover how the right tool buys you more time for the parts of spinning you actually love.

Listen to the Wool: A Why-to Guide for Joyful Spinning by Josefin Waltin

Less a technical manual than an invitation to slow down, this book encourages readers to embrace your mistakes as markers on your craft journey. It might make you a better spinner—even if you don’t change your yarn after reading.

Listen to our chat and tell us: What are your favorite craft books that more people should know about?

This episode is brought to you by:

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 your “local yarn store” with an experienced staff to answer all your fiber questions. Visit yarnbarn-ks.com to shop, learn, and explore.

A fifth-generation quilter from the legendary community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Loretta Pettway Bennett turns well used cloth into her own expressions of color and community.

Loretta Pettway Bennett began her quilting journey as a child, threading needles for her mother as she sewed scraps into bedcoverings. The women in the town of Gee’s Bend pieced quilt tops and got together to hand quilt their work, a tradition that spans decades. Loretta’s first quilt was an ambitious Flower Garden hexagon design that she cut and sewed entirely on her own when she was 12 years old. Half a century later, quilting is woven into Loretta’s life, as it is for her sister, aunts, cousins, and ancestors.

Although quilting has always been part of her life, Loretta’s vision is uniquely her own. In the early 2000s, Loretta decided to embrace her own style and gave herself the freedom to enjoy making quilts in her own way. She decided to resist rules that seams line up perfectly or that only certain colors go together. Instead, she lets the quilt make itself and invites the colors to talk to each other.

Working with thrifted and gifted material, she chooses the fabrics that speak to her (bright colors, few prints) and especially loves the pieces that have been well used and mended. The contemporary interest in thrifting and mending is a simple fact of life to Loretta, as natural as eating. Several of her designs include denim jeans, patched knees and all.

In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston mounted a major exhibition of quilts from Gee’s Bend, and Loretta saw her quilting traditions in a new light. A quilt that her mother made to cover her bed, on which Loretta and her sister had laid on the floor, was described as art in one of the country’s most important art museums. Standing in the exhibit, she says, “. . . the more I looked at the quilts, the more I started seeing what [viewers] saw in the quilts.”

Today, Loretta’s own quilts are part of museum, corporate, and U.S. State Department collections and have appeared in 19 U.S. Embassies worldwide. Her work has been recognized with numerous prizes and fellowships, most recently a 2026 Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft.

Loretta teaches quilting both to children in her community and through Vacation with an Artist, a program where crafters work in her workshop and learn the community’s methods. She plans to put her recent award money toward a coloring book of her quilts, an echo of her childhood wish to be a painter. Having spent decades painting with fabric, she loves to see others playing with color for themselves through her classes and is excited to see their interpretations in her coloring book.

Links

View some of Loretta Pettway Bennet’s quilts at Souls Grown Deep and Greg Kucera Gallery

Learn about Gee’s Bend and visiting the area at the Visit Gee’s Bend website

Discover the history and revival of the Freedom Quilting Bee

Find details of the Airing of the Quilts Festival, which will be held next on Saturday, October 3, 2026

Read about Loretta at the Maxwell/Hanrahan 2026 Awards in Craft website

Find details on the Vacation with an Artist hosted by Loretta and her sister-in-law, Marlene Bennett

Follow Loretta’s Instagram

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You’ll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

The Michigan Fiber Festival—Michigan’s largest sheep and wool festival—is a vibrant world of fiber arts. Discover five days of classes with nationally recognized teachers in spinning, weaving, lacemaking, dyeing, felting, and rug hooking. Enjoy three days of shopping. Delight in shearing and fiber arts demonstrations. Enjoy a truly immersive experience.

Join us in August at the picturesque Allegan County Fairgrounds (you can even camp on site!) Find more details at [michiganfiberfestival.info.](The Michigan Fiber Festival – Michigan's largest sheep and wool festival – is a vibrant world of fiber arts. Discover five days of classes with nationally recognized teachers in spinning, weaving, lacemaking, dyeing, felting, and rug hooking. Enjoy three days of shopping. Delight in shearing and fiber arts demonstrations. Enjoy a truly immersive experience.

Join us in August at the picturesque Allegan County Fairgrounds (you can even camp on site!) Find more details at michiganfiberfestival.info.)

With no background in fiber but a calling to help women in need, Diana Wiley built a thriving organization on handspun yarn, needlefelted gorillas, and a holistic community for over 200 women.

Stepping into the Handspun Hope booth at a fiber festival feels like entering a luxury boutique filled with natural fibers, colorful yarns, handmade buttons, and whimsical sculptures. It would be easy to enjoy the offerings without wondering about the company’s name—not only “handspun” (yes, the yarns on offer have all been spun by hand) but also “Hope.” The proceeds from everything sold in the booth are returned to women whom the company supports in Rwanda.

A decade after the bloody genocide in Rwanda had come to an end, Diana felt called to help the women living in its aftermath. She had volunteered in relief efforts in other parts of Africa, but her thoughts returned again and again to the plight of Rwandan women making their lives in the aftermath of HIV, extreme poverty, and the long shadow of conflict. Connecting with a former colleague who directed World Relief in Rwanda, she visited the country in 2007. What she saw moved her so greatly that within two days she had quit her corporate job to devote herself to helping.

Diana had no previous experience in yarn, and Rwanda had no local wool culture. Diana wondered if the wool from sheep she came across could be made into yarn, but the first samples she sent to fiber experts weren’t suitable for spinning. She found a handful of Merino rams from an failed government breeding project in the country, imported a group of Merino ewes from Kenya, and Handspun Hope began their handspinning program.

Once the sheep were found, the group had to develop spinning skills, first with handspindles and eventually with spinning wheels, and the women learned to dye the yarn with plants. They have added angora rabbits and yarns, too. Women also sculpt the group’s wool into imaginative ornaments and sculptures by needlefelting. Through the Hope Artisan Collective, the organization buys yarns and finished items from several fair trade women’s groups across Africa. The group is based not far from the habitat of the famous silverback gorillas that attract tourists from around the world, and high-end gift shops in the area sell the group’s needlefelted gorilla sculptures.

With income from the fiber and other goods, Handspun Hope not only pays their workers an above market wage, they also offer medical care, early childhood care, and a daily meal for their staff’s young family members. Although about half of the organization’s budget comes from donations, Diana emphasizes that the goal is to cultivate the women’s ability to support themselves through meaningful work.

Diana is proudest of helping the women of Handspun Hope build the lives that they wish for—like Rosa, their oldest member at age 92, who realized her dream of owning a pig. Each day, before arriving at the organization’s campus, she visits her granddaughter’s house to see the pig that she purchased through the work of her own hands.

Links

Handspun Hope website

The handmade items of not only Handspun Hope but also their partner organizations are available at Hope Artisan Collective.

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You’ll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

“Hi, I’m Gabi van Tassell from Bluebonnet Crafters, and I’m the inventor of TURTLE pin looms. Pin looms are small, handheld looms that quickly weave self-contained fabric pieces like squares, hexagons, and more. Weave them with almost any yarn you have on hand, then combine them into projects of any size. They make a wonderful companion for any fiber lover, at home or on the go. I’d love for you to visit us at turtleloom.com to explore the full loom catalog, patterns, and more. Hope to see you there.”

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 a few years of learning to spin, as her passions for spinning and other crafts grew, Pamela found herself teaching others to spin using resources from Spin Off’s website. When she had the opportunity to deepen her craft, she dove deeply into not only knitting and spinning but also weaving and other fibery explorations. In 2024 she became Spin Off’s content editor and in 2025 took the helm.

Pamela keeps in mind those experiences as a beginning spinner and a teacher of beginners as she develops the editorial plans for Spin Off’s magazine, website, and video offerings. She describes what goes into building a balanced issue—inspiration, project patterns, tutorials, and community— and what it takes to bring it all to life. For a publication nearing 50 years, Spin Off focuses on finding the right balance of foundational basics, brain-tickling invitations to exploration, and rigorous deep dives into spinning technique.

In this episode, hear Pamela’s take on the particular joy spinners take in sharing our craft, find out what a first-timer at SOAR should know, and learn about the free resources from teaching guides to video courses that Spin Off offers alongside the magazine.

Links

Spin Off website

Spin Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR)

The Spinning Teacher

A Twist on Color braid-spinning course with Kate Larson (free video on YouTube and the Spin Off site), with a full course available

The Great Aspineration teaching resources are available at learntospin.com

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You'll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

“Hi, I’m Gabi van Tassell from Bluebonnet Crafters, and I’m the inventor of TURTLE pin looms. Pin looms are small, handheld looms that quickly weave self-contained fabric pieces like squares, hexagons, and more. Weave them with almost any yarn you have on hand, then combine them into projects of any size. They make a wonderful companion for any fiber lover, at home or on the go. I’d love for you to visit us at turtleloom.com to explore the full loom catalog, patterns, and more. Hope to see you there.”

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 a map for exploration. Although it remained in print for decades, it became unavailable in 2005, and the weaving community felt the loss.

For the past several years, a group of nearly 100 weavers and other volunteers has been working to bring it back. Weavers from guilds from coast to coast have nearly finished reweaving all of the book’s samples—more than 1,200 of them—in color. Technical reviewers have created contemporary drafts. The original instructions for sinking-shed looms have been adapted to the jack looms more common in most weavers’ studios. Despite the updates, the project’s north star has been to honor Davison’s voice and intentions. The updated edition, to be published by Schiffer Craft, is expected in summer 2027.

Leading the effort is Caroline Cooley Browne, who happens to be Marguerite Porter Davison’s granddaughter. Davison died when Caroline was a baby, but she grew up hearing stories from her mother of warping looms in Marguerite’s attic studio, of train rides to the printer, of the woman who traveled to numerous guilds because she loved being with other weavers. When the copyright to the 1951 edition eventually came to Caroline through her family, she knew what to do with it, and she enlisted a team of eager volunteers to help bring the new edition to life.

In this episode, Caroline is joined by Donna Johnson of the Whidbey Weavers Guild, who coordinates volunteers for the guild’s sample weaving, and Anita Osterhaug, who connected the project with the publisher and has been part of the technical steering committee. Together they talk about the logistical undertaking of standardizing hundreds of samples across dozens of weavers, the technical decisions involved in updating the book, and what it has felt like to be part of the next chapter of something this important.

Listen in to hear why the green book has never gone out of fashion, what surprised the weavers as they worked through structures they’d never tried before, and what Marguerite Porter Davison’s granddaughter hopes she would think of the whole endeavor.

Links

Visit the page dedicated to The Big Weave on the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Project (BARN) website and sign up for updates. When the project is finished, the WIFs will be available through BARN.

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You’ll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway’s array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

“Hi, I’m Gabi van Tassell from Bluebonnet Crafters, and I’m the inventor of TURTLE pin looms. Pin looms are small, handheld looms that quickly weave self-contained fabric pieces like squares, hexagons, and more. Weave them with almost any yarn you have on hand, then combine them into projects of any size. They make a wonderful companion for any fiber lover, at home or on the go. I’d love for you to visit us at turtleloom.com to explore the full loom catalog, patterns, and more. Hope to see you there.”