In 2004, Linda Cortright began publishing Wild Fibers, a magazine that tells the stories of natural fibers from seemingly ordinary (mohair) to jaw-droppingly astonishing (seal wool). Linda’s magazine reports stories from remote, sometimes difficult locations (Antarctica and Afghanistan, just to name a few). Grounded by the pandemic, Linda found time for a bigger project: The Eye of Fiber, a new photo book that explores animal fibers on 6 continents.

Franklin Habit is often mobbed at fiber events, by fans of his own work or of his scandalous Romney, Dolores Van Hoofen. For this episode, we were lucky to find him in a quieter spot: his home studio, surrounded by his treasured collection of books and antique dollhouse.

In this episode, he explains his love of sewing, weaving, spinning, and other forms of needlework, some learned at his grandmother’s knee in Pennsylvania coal country. He has a particular love for vintage needle arts, preserving historic techniques and tools with curiosity and tenderness.

Settle down for a visit—by turns warm, whimsical, and whip-smart—with this celebrated knitter, writer, illustrator, and textile enthusiast.

Maggie Casey and Judy Steinkoenig are well known as teachers and writers. Almost every day for 28 years, you would have found one or both of them behind the counter or helping customers at their store, Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins in Boulder, Colorado. The retail store closed in early 2020, and as they plan their next projects, they sat down to tell us about the behind-the-scenes truths of owning a yarn store. Is it as delightful or as difficult as people might imagine? What’s the strangest request they ever got? What was the hardest decision they ever faced together? We got the inside scoop.

When you picture weaving, does the image of a big floor loom come to mind, or a heddle that holds the threads in place? How about a stack of perforated cardboard squares? Author, instructor, weaver, and spinner John Mullarkey came across the ancient craft of tablet weaving (also known as card weaving) and fell in love with the possibilities of the technique.

Visiting museums and archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Louie García finds inspiration to revive the fiber techniques of the past. But where others might see ruins, Louie sees connections to the Pueblo heritage that is part of his daily life.

It's easy to fall under the spell of Norman Kennedy as he shares stories of the old ways of spinning and weaving, which he learned from some of the last practitioners of their crafts. Growing up in Scotland, Norman was fascinated by the stories that the older spinners and weavers told—and even as they thought he was crazy to want to learn, they gladly explained what they knew: how to make durable cloth efficiently as part of a life of hard work.

While he picked up textile knowledge, Norman also picked up songs in many languages. Spinners and weavers may claim him as our own, but Norman's first visit to the United States came in 1965, when he sang at the Newport Folk Festival (the same year that Bob Dylan scandalized the crowd by plugging in an electric guitar). Returning to the United States the next year, he continued to sing while eventually serving as Master Weaver at Colonial Williamsburg. In the 1970s, he moved to northern Vermont and founded the Marshfield School of Weaving. The school continues to teach traditional spinning and weaving techniques and houses the largest collection of working 18th and 19th century looms in the United States.

Norman has taught classes, given concerts, and led waulkings around the world. In 2003, he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, which is the United States' highest honor for folk and traditional arts.

As an author, color expert, and publisher, Keith Recker's path returns over and over to handmade textiles. From the colors of turmeric and indigo to the resurgence of ethnic color in a former Soviet republic, he shares some of the amazing places his love for color has taken him.

Recovering from a health crisis, Charllotte Kwon needed to find a new career as well as an outlet for her love of color. She fell in love with the designs, hues, and pace of India, and she founded Maiwa to partner with textile artisans. Beginning with embroidery and printing, she cultivated relationships with families working in longstanding craft traditions, then worked to develop markets to create a livelihood for villagers who work with natural color. Maiwa's latest project is a new website that includes an exhaustive list of dyestuffs and how to use them (including 8 different methods for dyeing with indigo). In this episode, she reflects on how the scope of her project has changed over the decades—and what she hopes uncertain times will bring.

The first issue of Handwoven, which appeared in 1979, included an article by Debbie Redding, "Your Weaving Teacher." Your Weaving Teacher became a regular column full of practical advice until Deborah Chandler (as she was then known) left her writing and teaching pursuits to enter the Peace Corps. She found her way back to weaving, of course. In this conversation with Linda Ligon, she shares her best advice for any weaver—the tips and tricks that make weaving more accessible and enjoyable.

A self-described "spinner who weaves," Sara Lamb works in a wide variety of media: leather, embroidery, dyeing, and knotted cut pile, to name just a few. You might see her in one of her signature Japanese-style jackets, which she makes entirely from scratch, spinning white silk for a year or two before dyeing, weaving, and sewing the fabric into a simple shape. The slow yet intense process takes a year or more—and she has a closet full of them. Sara's willingness to make mistakes (and see them through) has led to a rich library of samples and series of projects.

Sara is the author of Spin to Weave, Practical Spinner's Guide: Silk, and Woven Treasures. She's also the instructor of the workshops Spin to Weave and Spinning Silk.