The Long Thread Podcast

Born in 1865 near Diamond, Missouri, George Washington Carver is one of the best known and most respected agricultural scientists in the history of the United States. Before his death in 1943, Carver “created 325 uses for peanuts, 108 applications for sweet potatoes and 75 products derived from pecans. Some of the products he created include chili sauce, meat tenderizer, instant coffee, shaving cream, and Worcestershire sauce,” according to the National Park Service website. Park Ranger Curtis Gregory stewards the scientist’s legacy and shares stories of his life at the George Washington Carver National Monument, which is located at Carver’s birthplace.

Even in his most industrious decades, as Carver obtained a masters degree, taught at the Tuskegee Institute, and worked in a laboratory, he kept his hands busy with needlework. Any crafter today will relate to his recollection in a 1931 letter: “If I had leisure time from roaming the woods and fields, I put it in knitting, crocheting, and other forms of fancy work” (quoted in Kremer, Gary R., ed., George Washington Carver in His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 128.)

Carver used uncommon materials and foraged natural dyestuffs in his work, drawing on his childhood love of painting. He designed projects not only to express his own creativity but also to inspire poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers who wanted to improve their homes. Gregory describes a handsewn table mat fashioned from cotton stalks and botanically dyed, a treasured example of a man who saw value where others did not.

Links

George Washington Carver National Monument

George Washington Carver Center at the Tuskegee Institute

“George Washington Carver.” National Park Service

“The Scientist Who Crocheted: George Washington Carver’s Unexpected Legacy” by Nancy Nehring. PieceWork Spring 2021.

“Nature’s Colors in the Hands of George Washington Carver” by Nancy Nehring. Spin Off Spring 2022.

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.

Gudrun Johnston has a deep legacy in Shetland knitting: her father’s family comes from the islands, and her mother founded a knitwear company that blended contemporary silhouettes with Fair Isle motifs, a business she called the Shetland Trader. But although Gudrun grew up wearing her mother’s designs, she didn’t learn to knit from her. Growing up largely elsewhere in Scotland, she learned the craft as a child, but it didn’t become central to her life for decades.

She eventually fell in love with knitting, thousands of miles from Shetland. In 2007, she published her first design, a skirt in a hemp-blend yarn for her daughter. From that point, knitting and Shetland drew her back more and more. Developing her own design style, she incorporated stitches and motifs from traditional knitting and found a deep affinity with yarn milled locally from the traditional dual-coated sheep. As generations of local knitters did before her, she draws on elements from elsewhere but gives them a distinctly Shetland flair.

Although knitters worldwide know about haps and Fair Isle knitting today, the island’s knitting tradition has faced economic threats over the years. Many knitters practiced the craft to make a bit of income, and a better-paying option (an oil terminal that opened in the mid-1970s) led to the dwindling of the cottage knitting industry. However, in tandem with the active local guild, Shetland Wool Week, and the new Shetland Organisation of Knitters, local knitters have preserved their traditions and are happy to share their knowledge.

Gudrun unites her own style with her Shetland roots in her designs, most recently the book Grand Shetland Adventure Knits, which she co-authored with her friend Mary Jane Mucklestone. She is at work on a new book exploring colorwork in a collection of knitted vests.

Links

Grand Shetland Adventure Knits by Gudrun Johnston and Mary Jane Mucklestone

See Gudrun’s tutorials and podcast episodes at her YouTube channel

Find the Identity Cowl in the Farm & Fiber Knits library

[Shetland Wool Week](*https://www.shetlandwoolweek.com/videos/how-to-wool-week/)

Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers

Shetland Organisation of Knitters

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.

If you love knitting, quilting, and all things fiber, you have to check out the new Fiber + Fabric Craft Festival. It’s brought to you by the team behind h+h Americas, premier craft trade shows across the U.S. They have something for everyone—from consumers to retailers to manufacturers. Come shop, learn, and get inspired.

Learn more at FiberFabricCraft.com.

Christina Garton didn’t get to be the editor of Little Looms by taking weaving too seriously.

First introduced to weaving in a class post-college, she joined Handwoven as assistant editor in 2011. She developed her passions for editing and weaving while working on both multishaft and rigid-heddle looms. Although she still loves working on her four- and eight-shaft looms, she was surprised to discover that she loves the hands-on, up-close nature of hand-manipulated weaving.

With the launch of Little Looms in 2016, Christina began exploring the horizons of pin looms, rigid-heddle looms, and inkle looms. She’s found that you can make amazingly clever, versatile, and beautiful cloth on even the simplest loom.

Listen in to find out who Christina defines as a real weaver, learn how to see your work in the magazine’s pages, and hear a preview of a new project coming from Little Looms this fall.

Links

Little Looms magazine

Zoo Crew by Deborah Bagley

Articles by Christina Garton on LittleLooms.com and HandwovenMagazine.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.

If you love knitting, quilting, and all things fiber, you have to check out the new Fiber + Fabric Craft Festival. It’s brought to you by the team behind h+h Americas, premier craft trade shows across the U.S. They have something for everyone—from consumers to retailers to manufacturers. Come shop, learn, and get inspired.

Learn more at FiberFabricCraft.com.

Small textile towns were once common in New England, with stout brick buildings harnessing the power of the region’s water to mill yarn and cloth. The Colony family had been owners of a mill in Harrisville, New Hampshire, since before the Civil War, but by the mid-twentieth century, such factories had begun to disappear. In 1970, 53 mills closed in New England, the Colony family’s among them. John Colony (known as Chick) returned from serving in the Coast Guard to a mill town without a working mill.

Chick saw that the small town would wither unless a new project came in to fill the gap. After considering the options, he had the idea: What better use could there be for an old mill village than to make yarn? So shortly after his father and uncle closed down the mill, Chick opened a business making woolen yarn on some of the same old equipment. The new endeavor was scaled back in scope, but yarn was coming from the old mill buildings once again under the label of a new company, Harrisville Designs.

The town’s buildings and surrounding watershed became the center of a historic preservation effort. More than 50 years later, Harrisville is known as the best preserved early textile village in the country.

Harrisville Designs’s woolen-spun yarns are dyed in the wool, blending 12 or 13 brightly dyed fibers into dozens of subtle heathered hues. Initially developed for weaving, the yarns have become popular among knitters looking for yarns with character.

The next generation, Chick’s son Nick Colony, has taken on management of the mill, developing knitting yarns such as their Nightshades color line and small-batch Shear as well as updating the company’s energy production and manufacturing facilities.

Harrisville Designs has produced a range of weaving looms for decades, but the youngest weavers probably know the company for their potholder looms. Realizing that the potholder loops and looms on the market were poor quality, Harrisville developed a metal loom and experimented to develop cotton loops in a range of bright colors.

Weavers, knitters, and history enthusiasts may all know Harrisville for different reasons, but the effort that began in 1971 as a preservation project has created new futures in this small New Hampshire town.

Links

Harrisville Designs website

Historic Harrisville

Red Brick Village, a documentary about preserving historic Harrisville

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.