Wild Fibers: Five Years of Favorites

Love it! If you are into the sheep world and want to hear all the struggles of getting beautiful yarn this is a must read. Adventure, history make this book a 5 on my list.

Travel the world of exotic fibers without leaving your spinning wheel. From former Soviet Central Asia to a tiny island off the coast of Washington in the U.S. Pacific northwest, follow your ears to a world of communion and imagination. If you cherish fiber arts and the animals that make them possible, this is a journey for you.

I did a lot of driving over the last three days, and of course was listening to books as I drove. This was one of the books I listened to. I don't remember what I paid for it, but it must have been incredibly cheap. This is a non-fiction book, a collection of articles by the editor of the wildly popular magazine, "Wild Fibers." Ok, maybe not more than 50 people in the country have ever heard of it. That's ok. It is a surprisingly interesting topic. I mean, who knew you could spin yarn and then knit an article of clothing out of buffalo hair??? That is, if you can afford it. Or get close enough to the "buffs" to shave that hair off.

So, the articles are interesting. They are Cortright's accounts of visiting the oddest farms or ranches on the face of the earth to see, and I assume to gather, natural fibers to spin into yarn or threads for weaving. The first article is set in Cashmere, India, no less. But I must say I am glad this was a short listen (about 2.5 hours). I could not have taken much more. The author herself narrated the book. Now, every once in a while you get an author who can also narrate, but it is rare. In this case, oh no! She should have left the narration to someone who could actually do it. Her clipped words and truncated phrases nearly drove me to distraction. As I said, I am glad it was short or I would have had to stop listening, and thereby miss the wonders of being a sheep-herding 65-year-old nun on Kilda Island (located directly in the middle of nowhere) who wears rubber hip wading boots OVER her nun's habit.

That said, it is interesting for me to think that people like Cortright exist, who might this very minute be spending time in Tibet discussing Tibetan sheep with Tibetan monks, or something like that. It has to be an interesting life for her. Me? Tomorrow I will go to school as usual and lock myself in a room full of pubescent children with noise makers. And after that I will do the same thing but with the most commonly mentally ill group of people on earth: Adolescents. Who would not envy my life? Maybe I'll edit a magazine called "Wild School Classrooms that Include Children with Noise Makers." Would you read it??? I'll hire a professional narrator. Tempting, isn't it?