I’ve always been around knitting. My mum knitted – she made me a sweater when I was a toddler that I still have to this day. And, as Peggy Orenstein says over and over in this book, SLFHM – she learned from her mum. My maternal grandmother was a wizard with the knitting needles. She could knit a sweater in no time at all, and she could do it without a pattern, watching TV, and barely ever even looking at her hands. It was an amazing thing to watch. I don’t remember the details now, but I feel like I was told that she could knit a whole sweater in a couple of days, she was that fast.
This book is all about knitting, but it goes much further than that. It starts with the sheep. During the early days of COVID-19, we all struggled to find ways to keep ourselves occupied, feel productive and, I think, feel connected to something bigger than us. Some of us baked, some gardened, some took up exercise or learned new hobbies. Orenstein decided to learn how to make a sweater, one she had made from start to finish, starting with shearing a sheep.
She enrolled in a course that taught her how to shear – not an easy process, it turns out, then she found an experienced sheep shearer and a farm that would be willing to allow her to come and practice what she’d learned. She invested in the gear and headed out, mask and all, and did, indeed, shear a few sheep, ending up with a fleece that she could use to turn into her sweater.
But this is just the first step. From there she must learn to card the wool (clean it), and spin the fleece into yarn. Another intensely difficult process that must be learned from experts. Once she has yarn, it must be dyed, a process she decides to undertake using only natural dyes. She must learn which plants produce which colours, how to prepare the dye, and even how to source natural products that will create the dye colours she needs. Then comes knitting, for which she engages a pattern designer to help her figure out exactly what she’s knitting before she can get down to business.
It sounds like a simple enough premise, but woven throughout are other elements – Orenstein grappling with the twin threats of wildfires and COVID-19, her musings about her relationships with her family and her friends, her memories that are tied to her current home, and also all the historical research she has done about each new skill she is learning – which is in depth and fascinating all on its own.
This felt like an echo of what the early to mid days of the pandemic were like in my own mind. How it was so big and such a scary situation that it made me re-assess every element of my life, value each relationship because of the threat of loss, and also how it made me look to my own place in the long history of the world. It also underlined the fractures in society as it has been built, imperfectly, over the course of human history. It shows how little progress we have made (both in terms of our social organization and our own ability to understand and parse all the information and disinformation swirling around us), even as we all hang on each trickle of news coming from a scientific community that was able to produce, in record time (despite how long it felt on the ground), a vaccine that could save millions of lives – my own, most likely, included. This was an unprecedented time in modern history, and one that, for better or worse, we all shared.
I really enjoyed this reading experience, now that the first harsh panic of the pandemic is behind us and I can look upon her experiences from a bit of a distance. I’ve been avoiding actual accounts of people dealing with COVID-19, and yet I’m drawn to these types of stories of how people dealt with the knowledge that it was out there, swirling ever closer, and how they coped with that threat while stuck in stasis and inaction. It was such a difficult balance, and I found that for myself focusing on the small activities of daily life was the only way through. For me the pandemic isn’t over. I still have to be cautious, and I still wear masks when I’m in indoor spaces with people who aren’t my family. But everyone around me, it seems, has gone back to life as normal, and what once felt like a shared experience now feels like an isolating one. Reading about the time when we were all in this together helped me, briefly, feel like I was less alone, and I hadn’t realized that I needed that sense of connection.
I think that memoirs like this will become important historical accounts of what it was like to be on the inside of a global crisis in modern times. What the mundane became when our normal routines were turned on their heads. But it’s also a historical exploration of women’s work, of the knowledge and skills that were passed down from one woman to another (SLFHM) and the value that knowledge holds, even in a modern world where this work is no longer necessary. it was fascinating to learn about each step in this process and what it took to even become a novice at it, and how difficult that work must have been without the benefit of modern technology and access.
I don’t think this book will be for everyone. But if you’re someone who enjoys quieter, more contemplative prose, or who also wants to dip a toe back into that unprecedented time in our lives, this is the book for you. Likewise if you have a historical interest in women’s work and knowledge, this has a huge amount of that to share. I’m glad I came across this, and that I decided to give it a try now.
In this lively, funny memoir, Peggy Orenstein sets out to make a sweater from scratch–shearing, spinning, dyeing wool–and in the process discovers how we find our deepest selves through craft. Orenstein spins a yarn that will appeal to everyone.
The Covid pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater.
Orenstein hoped the project would help her process not just wool but her grief over the recent death of her mother and the decline of her dad, the impending departure of her college-bound daughter, and other thorny issues of aging as a woman in a culture that by turns ignores and disdains them. What she didn’t expect was a journey into some of the major issues of our time: climate anxiety, racial justice, women’s rights, the impact of technology, sustainability, and, ultimately, the meaning of home.
With her wry voice, sharp intelligence, and exuberant honesty, Orenstein shares her year-long journey as daughter, wife, mother, writer, and maker–and teaches us all something about creativity and connection. – Goodreads
Book Title: Unraveling
Author: Peggy Orenstein
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Harper
Released: January 24, 2023
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Pandemic, Crafting, Knitting, Re-connecting with Nature and History
Pages: 224
Date Read: July 16-17, 2023
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.97/5 (2,212 ratings)