Includes index

Clara Parkes presents a fast-paced account of the year she spent transforming a 676-pound bale of wool into commercial yarn, and the people and vanishing industry she discovered along the way

Join Parkes on a cross-country adventure as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins. In pursuit of the perfect yarn, she meets the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. -- adapted from jacket