UPDATE: Due to damage sustained at Interabang Books during Sunday night's tornado, this event has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience.

In VANISHING FLEECE: ADVENTURES IN AMERICAN WOOL, join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes shepherds, wool dyers, and countless mill workers ... people without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. 

Travel the country with Clara Parkes 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, the author describes a brush with the dangers of opening a bale (they can explode), and her adventures from Maine to Wisconsin (“the most knitterly state”) and back again; along the way, she presents a behind-the-scenes look at the spinners, scourers, genius inventors, and crazy-complex mill machines that populate the yarn-making industry. By the end of the book, you’ll be ready to set aside the backyard chickens and add a flock of sheep instead. Simply put, no other book exists that explores American culture through the lens of wool. 

Author of six books, including the New York Times bestselling KNITLANDIA, as well as editor of the anthology A STASH OF ONE'S OWN, Clara Parkes has dedicated her life to figuring out what makes wool tick -- and finding the right words to write about it. She lives in Maine and divides her time between city and country, writing from a desk in the kitchen while wearing as much wool as she can.

“While I laughed and loved Clara’s prose, I was left with so much more. It’s actually a lovely and melancholy look at an American industry that’s quickly changing, and a beautiful story of the people who are sacrificing to maintain it.” — Judy Greer, actor, director, and author of I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star

“Given my hatred of puns, I absolutely do not want to say Clara Parkes spins an incredible yarn, but how else to describe this incredible book? Parkes is the Mark Kurlansky of wool!” — John Hodgman, actor, humorist, and author of VACATIONLAND