The Long Thread Podcast

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.

Handspun Hope website

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.

Spin Off website

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.

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.

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.”

Editor, teacher, and shepherd Kate Larson makes the case that every knitter is already part of the farm-to-fiber story—whether they know it or not.

Kate Larson is the editor of Farm & Fiber Knits and a beloved teacher of spinning, knitting, and weaving. She took time out from lambing season to talk about the magazine’s goals.

Kate Larson isn’t making a magazine only for farmers and handspinners. In this episode, she talks about what Farm & Fiber Knits is really for: helping knitters connect with the natural fibers they love. Whether you’re buying wool at a yarn store, tracking down a small-batch skein at a farmers market, or dreaming about rare fibers from around the world, Kate makes the case that you’re already part of this story—you just might not know it yet. When developing new issues of the magazine, she looks for stories to bring that world to life, with armchair journeys to fiber traditions as far afield as the Faroe Islands and Madagascar. The magazine’s patterns are designed to work for any contemporary knitter using a wide range of yarns from one-of-a-kind to available everywhere.

Nearly twenty years of teaching have shaped Kate’s approach to designing the new Farm & Fiber Knits retreats, including a recent trip to farms in New Hampshire and Vermont where participants met shepherds, handled fleeces, and watched the connection between knitter and fiber come to life in participants’ hands.

Listen in to hear Kate push back on the myth that sheep are stupid, learn what Farm & Fiber Knits offers for knitters at every point on the natural-fiber spectrum, and hear the story of a shepherd seeing yarn from her own flock for the very first time.

Farm & Fiber Knits magazine and website

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.

Book Club Podcast: Fiber art veterans Susan Bateman and Melissa Parsons compare notes with host Anne Merrow about the books every weaver, spinner, knitter, and crocheter should have on the bookshelf—plus big news about a classic weaving directory.

They’re the first books you reach for, the ones you’ll never part with, and the first thing you recommend to every new crafter. If you have only one book on weaving, spinning, knitting, and crochet, make it one of these. In this episode of the Long Thread Podcast, three book lovers talk about what reading material we’d never be without.

Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler

Weaving for Beginners, Revised and Updated by Peggy Osterkamp

Big news for “The Green Book”—A Handweaver’s Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison

A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns from the Friends of Handwoven, edited by Carol Strickler

Ashford Book of Rigid Heddle Weaving by Rowena Hart

Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell

Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book

Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt

How to Crochet by Sara Delaney

The Crocheter’s Skill-Building Workshop by Dora Ohrenstein

The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson

The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius

Listen to our chat and tell us: Do you agree? What craft books make your must-have list?

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.

Knitters and crocheters know Angela Tong as a designer with hooks and needles, while weavers recognize her work in rigid-heddle and pin looms. Visitors to galleries and artisan markets know her as a potter. Angela thinks of herself simply as a maker, always drawn to creating beauty with her hands.

Her first professional job set the tone: after earning a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she produced fine platinum jewelry for Tiffany & Co. But beginning in her teens, she keenly felt the urge to learn to knit. A colleague at that first job taught her the knit stitch—just the knit stitch—and opened the world of fiber arts for her. Discovering a talent for clarifying instructions while test knitting other designers’ work, she began submitting designs for publication. Although she had not initially pictured herself as a teacher, that skill of clear explanation led her to teaching, and she eventually became a certified knitting instructor.

Angela discovered another fiber-arts love in PieceWork March/April 2010, which featured pin looms on the cover. She tracked down a handmade pin loom from a small maker, wove a doll blanket, and never looked back. Her pin-loom and rigid-heddle designs regularly appear in Little Looms, and she is a popular instructor at Weave Together events.

In each of her crafts, Angela’s style is symmetrical and refined, with an emphasis on finishing that she describes as a through line in everything she makes, from pottery to pin-loom blankets.

Whatever the medium, Angela brings the same exacting eye and genuine delight in craft — whether she's warping a loom, trimming a pot, or teaching a roomful of students to hem stitch.

PieceWork March/April 2010 featured a pin-loom blanket on the cover.

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.

Before Ravelry, before knitting podcasts, before the internet fully found its craft obsession, there was Knitty. Amy Sadler shares the inspiration and evolution of the online knitting phenomenon.

In the early 2000s, as the internet became part of daily life for millions, Amy Sadler began a knitting blog. The blog movement connected knitters around the world (whether newbies or longtime stitchers) and sparked friendships and inspiration. Amy participated in a blog ring, which directed readers from one blog to another, and saw the opportunity to collect and present the clever patterns and ideas that were cropping up around the web. She put out a call for patterns, her husband coded the website, and she released the first Knitty in Fall 2002.

Since the first issue, Knitty has released 95 issues (and counting), becoming one of the most respected and longest established knitting periodicals currently published in any format. Knitty was the first publication to include patterns by knitting stars including Cookie A, Gudrun Johnston, Ysolda Teague, Stephen West, and Kate Gilbert. The magazine’s technique section has offered groundbreaking new ideas including Jeny’s Magic Cast-On. Knitty was at the forefront of the sock-knitting craze in the 2000s and a leader in the push for expanded size ranges (its garments are sized from XS–5X).

And access to Knitty’s patterns and articles has always been free to users. Amy is Knitty’s only full-time employee; the publication pays contributors for their work and commissions professional technical editing for every pattern. To support Knitty, a longstanding Patreon program invites readers to fund the magazine directly.

More than 20 years in, as the knitting community and the internet have seen dramatic shifts, Knitty continues to welcome new voices and connect knitters worldwide with fresh ideas.

Knitty

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.

What new craft books are can't-miss? Which are the classic reference books that every crafter should have on the shelf? In the Yarn Barn of Kansas Book Club, teachers and book lovers talk about the books they wouldn't be without.

Sponsored by Yarn Barn of Kansas

Best known for his work with peanuts, renowned agricultural scientist George Washington Carver had a lifelong passion for needlework. Park Ranger Curtis Gregory shares stories about Carver’s interests in handwork and natural dyeing.

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.

George Washington Carver National Monument

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.