The Long Thread Podcast

Jayna Zweiman wants to wrap the world in kindness and warmth.

She founded Welcome Blanket in 2017 as an invitation to crafters to make handmade blankets for refugees who have just arrived in the United States. Originally, she pictured 2,000 miles of blankets, as long a distance as the proposed wall along the southern border. Instead of a barrier, Jayna imagined the distance as an opportunity to welcome refugees as they establish a new life.

Nearly a decade later, crafters have far exceeded the initial goal. With more than 8,000 blankets made and distributed so far, she has set a new goal: 36,521 blankets, enough to circle the Earth. In 2026, the project received the Golden Scissors Award for Social Impact, which recognizes leaders in the craft industry.

Giving a Welcome Blanket is straightforward:

Make a 40" x 40" blanket by hand, using any technique and materials you like (as long as they're easy to care for). It should be difficult to give the blanket up because you love it so much.

Include a note of welcome that shares something about your own experience of immigration, migration, or relocation.

Send the blanket and note to be distributed through one of Welcome Blanket’s partner organizations or shown first at one of the organization’s public exhibitions.

The connection to the immigrant experience is personal for Jayna, whose grandfather told her about his first look at the Statue of Liberty when he immigrated to the United States. As she points out, though, each person’s experience of migration and relocation is unique, from the Pilgrims to relocated indigenous Americans to recent arrivals. Many Welcome Blanket crafters aren’t sure what to write in their welcome notes, but whatever the personal history, the notes are the opportunity for connection and shared feeling of humanity.

Refugee families often arrive with very little and have only a few days to set up a new home or take a long bus ride to another city. Welcome Blanket recipients might receive their blankets in a welcome box alongside toothbrushes and other basic supplies, tucked into a backpack, or waiting in a first apartment. For people who have left nearly everything behind, a handmade blanket is a rare gift: something new that carries another person’s hands and care.

Some of the blankets are distributed right away, but many are displayed in exhibits in art museums, cultural centers, and airports. The first show, at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, began with an empty gallery that filled week by week as blankets arrived. Visitors can read the welcome notes alongside the blankets, and a few minutes with those stories can bring even the most reserved viewer to tears. Right now, two exhibitions are on view at LAX in Los Angeles, where travelers waiting at baggage claim stop to look and often seem to relax.

Welcome Blanket is currently collecting quilts for QuiltCon 2027 in Atlanta (due November 15) as well as ongoing donation.

Links

Welcome Blanket website

Welcome Blanket 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.

Calling all knitters and fiber lovers—the 2026 Great Holiday Giveaway is here!

Enter to win a prize from our partners, featuring must-have fiber gifts, from kits and tools to yarn and more. With over $2,100 in prizes and six chances to enter your name to win, this could be your lucky day. See the rules and eligibility requirements at the bottom of the page. Good luck!

The best project books not only combine gorgeous designs with clear instructions, they also expand your fiber-arts horizon with a trip to a new part of the world, a collection of the best ideas of fellow crafters, an in-depth tour of a great technique, or the chance to incorporate your favorite non-fiber hobby. Here are some of the best project books that the Yarn Barn of Kansas loves to share.

Crochet

The Tunisian Crochet Handbook by Toni Lipsey

A collection of wearable designs from complete novice to accomplished crocheter skill levels. Features 20 patterns.

Knitting

Knit Like a Latvian: Mittens by Ieva Ozolina

Colorwork handcoverings with a traditional shape and graphic, surprisingly modern patterns. Features 50 patterns.

Nordic Sailor’s and Fishermen’s Sweaters by Lotte Rahbek and Gitte Verner Jensen

With simple shapes and classic motifs, these historically inspired sweaters look like the best of contemporary Scandinavian knitwear. Features 23 patterns.

Traditional Danish Sweaters

Based on nattrøjer (night sweater) patterns, this collection of includes 11 complete designs and 200 charted motifs to customize your own sweater.

Charming Colorwork Socks and Joyful Colorwork Socks by Charlotte Stone

Sweet sock patterns, many whimsical, for any season or mood. Each book includes 25 sock patterns.

The Sock Project and The Sock Obsession by Summer Lee

A variety of colorwork, texture, and plain designs with instructions for several construction methods. Lee’s basic sock pattern is a mainstay at Yarn Barn! Each book includes 25 sock patterns.

52 Weeks of Accessories from Laine

One of the generous pattern collections from the Finland-based publisher, this collection includes projects from a number of desigers. Other books in the series include Socks (volumes I and II), Easy Knits, and Scarves.

Weaving

Interlaced: The Weavers' Guild of Boston Celebrates 90 Years of Friendship and Education

With projects for bags, scarves, rugs, and more, this collection brings together ideas from the distinguished group.

Sixty Scarves for 60 Years from the Weaver’s Guild of Greater Baltimore

With most of these projects using 8 shafts or fewer, the collection explores the huge array of creativity of the guild’s members.

The Best of Yarn Barn

Gathering the top-selling designs in the store’s 50-year history, the collection includes patterns that Susan Bateman, Melissa Parsons, and the Yarn Barn staff know produce great finished projects. Includes 25 projects.

Doubleweave by Jennifer Moore

Moore’s definitive book on the doubleweave technique hides a collection of inspiring projects—the kind you’ll want to make even if the technique isn’t your favorite. Features 12 projects.

Overshot Simply

Crackle Weave Simply

Shadow Weave Simply

Summer & Winter Simply

Weaving Hand Towels Simply

Each book in this series by Susan Kesler-Simpson begins with an exploration of each structure, followed by 25–38 projects to inspire your own exploration.

Handwoven Baby Blankets

Handwoven Table Linens

Rags to Rugs

Weaving with Clasped Weft

Renowned teacher Tom Knisely presents project collections with ideas to spark your own creativity. Each includes 27–33 projects.

Rigid-Heddle Weaving: Basics and Beyond by Deborah Jarchow

With weaving instructions and designs for a wide variety of projects, this book helps weavers get the most from a simple loom. Includes 31 projects.

Dyeing

Botanical Cyanotype by Sarah Bourne Rafferty

If you only experimented with sun prints as a child, you may be surprised not only at how gorgeous these botanical prints can be but also by the fact that you can make the solutions yourself. The book includes 14 projects as well as basic methods.

Listen to our chat and tell us: What are your favorite craft books that inspire you to get making?

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.

How did people make and use the textiles we’ve created for millennia? From nalbinding to netting to bast fiber processing, Sally Pointer looks for answers by working with her hands.

Some fiber crafts are as old as humanity, even recorded in cave paintings. Some fiber crafts are so little practiced now that they’re considered endangered. For textile historian (and prehistorian) Sally Pointer, they’re entirely vital and full of new discoveries.

The Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts tracks more than 150 crafts in the UK practiced by so few people that they may disappear within a generation or so, and it names the known practitioners. Sally’s name appears twice, once for nalbinding and once for bast fiber processing. Those are far from her only fiber fascinations; she is currently at work on a book about netting, and she speaks passionately about splicing and cordage-making.

Nalbinding is plagued by misconceptions: that it’s solely a Viking craft, an early form of knitting, only interesting for reenactors, or slow to work. Nalbinding—It’s Not Knitting, Sally’s 2026 book, presents it as a useful contemporary craft still practiced around the world. The technique is as useful for creating twenty-first-century socks as for the ancient Egyptian examples excavated from archaeological sites.

As an experimental archaeologist, Sally not only looks at ancient textile finds; she tries to understand how they were made and used. Looking at an artifact and guessing how it was used can breed misconceptions; experimental archaeologists test those guesses to learn what it was like for the people who used them. “This is almost allowing us to touch the hand of the original maker for a fleeting moment,” Sally says. “And that is spine-chilling at times.”

Links

Sally’s website

Sally’s current book is Nalbinding—It’s Not Knitting

Lime Bast: Harvest, Preparation and Use by Sally Pointer and Chiz Harward

Find Sally’s free videos on fiber processing and textile techniques at YouTube

Her online and in-person class list is available at Sally Pointer Heritage Education

Red List of Endangered Crafts

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.

Calling all fiber lovers! Here’s your invitation to indulge your holiday wishes: Long Thread Media’s Great Holiday Giveaway 2026! From October 9 through November 13, enter for your chance to win a prize from one of our partners, featuring tempting fiber gifts for weavers, spinners, knitters, and needleworkers.

There’s more than $1,400 in prizes, and you’ll have five chances to put your name in the hat. Visit [Handwovenmagazine.com/giveaway]( for details and be sure to check the rules and eligibility requirements at the bottom of the page.

Go on, put your name in! Good luck.

How could you possibly improve on wool, the perfect fiber? In the 20th century, scientists thought they could do just that. Some of their innovations have disappeared . . . but some remain.

In the middle of the 20th century, with technology promising a modern lifestyle that would be newer and better in every way, wool fiber began to look old-fashioned. The incredible demand for wool up through World War II began to wane, and the apparent miracle of synthetic fiber reached American homes.

Yet sheep still formed the backbone of some states’ economies, and they kept producing wool. If only there were some way to make it easier to wash and prevent moths from eating clothes, carpets, and furniture, modern households might still have a place for wool. And if wool fiber was less important, maybe there was another use for fleece.

In her new book, Reinventing Wool, Professor Melissa M. Littlefield takes us through the history of four innovations that sought to bring wool into the modern era: Woolite synthetic detergent, machine-washable wool, the chemical insecticide EQ-53, and extraction methods for lanolin. From a national roadshow featuring a starlet bathing a lamb in a tub of Woolite to a toxic DDT-containing fabric treatment, the improvements range from everyday to strange. Yet in their own ways, each of the treatments imagined a place for wool in a rapidly changing world.

Littlefield talks about how her research spoke to her personally as a spinner, knitter, and small-batch wool yarn producer. Decades after these groundbreaking “improvements” to wool, most of our furniture isn’t vulnerable to moth damage anyway. Lanolin is a common ingredient in both personal care and industry. And crafters debate the value of machine-washable wool, even as we find it in every yarn shop. Who could have predicted where wool would go?

Links

Reinventing Wool

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.

A small group of Vermonters wanted to improve the environment and preserve the rural character of the state. Along with two friends, David Richie and his wife found a way: they founded the Green Mountain Spinnery.

David Richie and his wife, Diana, wanted to keep their home state and region green and farm-friendly. Believing in thinking globally and acting locally, they joined a reading group in the late 1970s with others interested in conservation and social responsibility. Concerned about the environmental dangers of nuclear power in New England, their friends Claire Wilson and Libby Mills found themselves in jail after protesting a nearby power plant, giving them time to talk about what they could do to make a difference on a smaller scale. Claire asked, “When I see so many sheep here in Vermont, why do I have to order my weaving yarn from Sweden?”

Farmers’ markets had begun to arise, bringing produce from the field to home cooks in the heart of the city, letting small-scale farmers keep more of their profits by selling direct. Why not do the same for shepherds and make their sheep’s wool available to weavers? As knitters and weavers, Claire and Libby knew about using yarn, but none of the four knew anything about operating a wool mill, let alone starting one. Undaunted, they took one step after another: they wrote a business plan, purchased an old gas station as their new facility, and began purchasing mill equipment.

And so began an adventure that has passed 45 years and is still gathering steam.

Learning to produce yarn—understanding the equipment, downstream (literally) effects, sourcing fibers—is an ongoing process. The Spinnery makes thousands of pounds of yarn each year for farmers, yarn companies, and their own store, but they continually refine the process, from improving their wastewater handling to switching over to more eco-friendly spinning oil. Although David began without fiber experience, his influence is felt in every part of the tightly-packed Spinnery building.

In addition to environmental stewardship, the Spinnery has always been dedicated to offering an equitable work environment. To give employees a stake in the company’s success, they decided early on to become a worker-owned cooperative. The values that led to Green Mountain Spinnery’s founding in 1981 continue guiding the project.

Links

Green Mountain Spinnery

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 Mountain & Valley Fiber Arts Festival comes to Durango, Colorado, the first full weekend in October. Formerly the Taos Wool Festival, this new chapter brings together natural fiber artists, vendors, instructors, growers, and makers for a weekend of shopping, learning, and community. Plan your fiber arts weekend at Mountain & Valley Fiber Arts Fest at mavwafiberartsfest.org.

Green Mountain Spinnery is a worker-owned cooperative woolen mill with over 45 years of experience spinning quality yarns from natural local and US-produced fibers. They craft woolen-spun yarns in a wide variety of rich heathered hues and premium fiber blends. As a part of the chain from sheep to skein and shepherd to maker, Green Mountain Spinnery is dedicated to respecting the environment we all share. Visit the mill shop in Putney, VT, or explore their collection at spinnery.com.