Book Review: Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater by Peggy Orenstein (audiobook)

Carin Siegfried

Apr 22

I haven't read Ms. Orenstein's more serious books but I think now I will go back and check them out because I enjoyed this one so much. It's pretty much a memoir of the two worst years of Covid (2020 and 2021) during which time Peggy decided to try to make a sweater from scratch and her father was mentally failing. She learns how to shear a sheep (which, it turns out, is super hard), how to card and spin wool (looking into multiple fairy takes involving wool spinning), and dye it. She already knows how to knit, although she's never made a pattern before (and doesn't now--she get a professional to help her and it still has to be tweaked along the way.)

We all know the mental angst of 2020 and how many of us were pulled to distractions one could do at home, that often encouraged nesting and coziness. But Peggy nicely takes it much further, to the point where I often thought of this book like The Omnivore's Dilemma but for clothes. And yes, while listening to this book, I did buy two new dresses and two new tops, that have some plastic fibers in them, and which may have been made with slave labor, ugh. I agree we should all think more about what we put on our bodies, and consume way less clothing, but also it's really, really hard as Peggy can attest. In fact, she explains a lot of the "natural" dyes can be carcinogenic, poisonous when wet, or create poisonous wastewater to dispose of. Natural doesn't always mean healthy.

While knitting, she often thinks of her mother, who died a few years ago, and whose death she is still processing. She talks to her dad on long Zoom calls while carding, even though he doesn't seem always to understand she's not in the room with him. And she thinks a lot about her teenage daughter who's about to go off to college, and who decisively does not want to learn how to knit. It was exactly the right amount of feelings, the right level of technical detail, and the right book for me at this moment. It was a comfort and a delight. Like a great sweater. I was bummed at the end to not see the sweater she'd made (yes, I did go to the website and download the pdf of other materials, but it was just endnotes and a bibliography--no photos.) But I imagine it, and it may be more glorious in my mind.

I borrowed this digital audiobook from my local library via Libby.

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