Long Thread Podcast: Clara Parkes (full transcript)

We spoke with Clara Parkes for Season 7 of the Long Thread Podcast. Beginning in 2000 with Knitter's Review, Clara has taken readers with her on an exploration of knitting yarns, mostly devoting her energies to the amazing properties of wool. Her most recent projects are The Wool Channel and The Daily Respite.

Read the show notes or enjoy the full transcript below.

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Welcome to the Long Thread Podcast, about spinning, stitching, and weaving by hand. The podcast is presented by Long Thread Media, publishers of Spin Off, Handwoven, PieceWork, and Little Looms magazines. Find us online at longthreadmedia.com.

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Anne Merrow (AM): I’m your host, Long Thread Media cofounder Anne Merrow. Clara Parkes founded Knitter’s Review, a website and newsletter that gave knitters information and reviews on yarns and notions. After years of running this site and writing several bestselling books, she got the offer of a lifetime, the chance to buy a bale of wool. When she accepted, she started a whole new phase of her career—not just reporter or yarn manufacturer, but leader of an expedition to see how wool becomes yarn today and guide through mills and dye houses for a group of subscribers. In keeping with the ambitious and uncharted nature of the project, she called it the Great White Bale after Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Clara, thanks for being here.

Clara Parkes (CP): Thank you for having me.

AM: So, you know, I could start way back at the beginning with Knitter’s Review, or I could ask you what you’re doing right now, but I’m actually going to start in the middle and say: Clara, would you tell me about the Great White Bale, and what possessed you to become a yarn maker?

CP: Ahh—so yes, that definitely is in the middle. What possessed me to do that? So we’re talking 2012, I believe it was. And so that’s 12 solid years of writing weekly product reviews, yarn reviews, books, tools, events, that kind of stuff. But primarily it was yarn. And I had swatched so many skeins of yarn at that point that I really was feeling like a jaded hag. “This? Ah, another skein of yarn. I know how that one’s going to knit up.” You know, like nothing could surprise me anymore. But also parallel to that was this fear of like, okay, I’m really good at analyzing a yarn, figuring out how it was made, what’s in it, how it’s going to behave, what it wants to become. But I have never . . . . I’m a hand spinner, I love to spin yarn, but I have never walked through the steps a commercial yarn company has walked through in order to bring a skein of yarn to the public. And I started to realize without really understanding that part of the process, I couldn’t possibly have a full depth of empathy and respect and understanding of what the challenges are so that I could appreciate the true miracle when a skein of yarn actually does reach people.