Showing titles in Crafts & Hobbies

Throughout history, across cultures and countries, silk has reigned as the undeniable queen of fabrics, yet its origins and evolution remain a mystery. In a gorgeous and sweeping narrative, Silk weaves together its intricate story and the indelible mark it has left on humanity.

Nick shares his experience of working at the woodshop with his ragtag crew of champions, tells you all about his passion for the discipline of woodworking, and teaches you how to make two of the woodshop’s most popular projects along the way: a Pop Top bottle opener and a three-legged stool. This audiobook will take you behind the scenes of the woodshop, both inspiring and teaching you to make your own projects while besotting you with the infectious spirit behind the shop and its complement of dusty wood-elves.

Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her 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.

When we think of slavery, most of us think of the American South. We think of back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don't think of slavery in the North, nor do we think of the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May's rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile America, and the bonds between the agrarian South and the industrial North in the antebellum era - all through the discovery of a remarkable quilt.

The average out-of-state elk hunter spends over $4,000 to go elk hunting. Then, nineteen out of twenty of them fail to find an elk. This is a shame! I love in the mountains of Colorado, amongst elk herds. The picture on the cover of my book was taken 200 yds. from my house. I have the opportunity to study elk behavior, as well as the behavior of the out-of-state elk hunters. Thus this book. I explain how the new-to-the-area elk hunter can find his herd. This is stuff I learned myself. The book is great for the beginner elk hunter! Also a great refresher, and some new ideas for the ...

Once an essential skill, the ability to build a clinker boat, first innovated by the Vikings, can seem incomprehensible today. Yet it was the clinker that afforded us access to the oceans, and its construction has become a lost art that calls to the do-it-yourselfer in all of us. John Gornall heard the call. A thoroughly unskilled modern man, Gornall set out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It was, he recognized, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who knew little about woodworking and even less about boat building.

From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization - from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole).

Myquillyn Smith is all about embracing reality - especially when it comes to decorating a home bursting with boys, pets, and all the unpredictable messes of life. In The Nesting Place, Myquillyn shares the secrets of decorating for real people - and it has nothing to do with creating a flawless look to wow your guests. It has everything to do with embracing the natural imperfection and chaos of daily living.

There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.

Cricut crafting is exciting, but with so much jargon-filled information and not-so-helpful “how-to” guides out there, it is also confusing for Cricut newbies. You’ve probably felt like you were drowning in an ocean of information every time you wanted to create your first project. Cricut for Newbies has your back! This all-in-one is a treasure trove of Cricut knowledge with step-by-step instructions on how to use a Cricut machine and more! Even if you’ve never made crafts before, you’ll gain skills, confidence, and the guidance you need to create your first projects.

"Woodcraft" is a quite poetic guide to the wild by Nessmuk. Canoeing had been popularized by Scottish lawyer John MacGregor in the 1860s, but the typical canoe trip of the day employed expert guides and heavy canoes. Nessmuk, who was 1.60 m tall and 47 kg, had a 2.7 m long, 4.8 kg solo canoe. He named it the Sairy Gamp (the name of a Dickens character) and in it he completed a 428 km journey through the central Adirondacks. He was 62 years old and in frail health (tuberculosis and asthma) at the time.

A hilarious, heartfelt romp that will bring you home to yourself. You don’t have to be a knitter to fall in love with this book - any person who’s ever made anything with their hands will dive joyfully into these minutes and come back up renewed and ready to create. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron’s tales, each inspired by something she knitted, will speak to anyone who’s ever loved (or lost). From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every chapter has a moving story behind it.

Back in the days when I was starting with Wood Craft, I was desperately looking for the go-to guide about the processes and the tools involved. Woodworking is a vast subject with many branches or sub-genres of this craft like cabinet making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and wood turning. This book is for people who are in their first lap (zero to three years) of the woodcrafting journey and want to have a holistic idea of processes and tools and need help in their initial projects.

Good games don’t emerge out of thin air. Game design is a craft, and as in any other craft, there are skills and knowledge, acquired through study and practice, that accelerate progress toward better games. You Said This Would Be Fun explores these skills, explaining how great games exhibit qualities that designers of all experience levels can strive to emulate.

Unleash your inner adventurer: how to plan the ultimate retirement that's anything but boring. Inside this jam-packed audiobook, you'll find hundreds of ideas to spark your imagination for planning an exciting, active, happy, healthy, and mentally sharp life after work.

From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework.

Whether she’s playing an “age-defying” book editor on television or dazzling audiences on the Broadway stage, Sutton Foster manages to make it all look easy. How? Crafting. From the moment she picked up a cross stitch needle to escape the bullying chorus girls in her early performing days, she was hooked. Cross stitching led to crocheting, crocheting led to collages, which led to drawing, and so much more. Channeling her emotions into her creations centered Sutton as she navigated the significant moments in her life and gave her tangible reminders of her experiences.

In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.

You’re a maker, a creator, an expert at your craft. Building a profitable jewelry business doesn't have to be a dream any longer if you know how to connect with your audience and create desire for your brand. Whether you want to grow a six-figure lifestyle business or a multi-seven-figure empire, now more than ever, consumers want to support emerging talent and small businesses like yours. They just need to find you.

Handmade is a profound meditation on the eternal value of manual work, creativity, human fallibility, and the stubborn pursuit of quality work. Rogowski tells his life story of how he became a craftsman and how years of persistent work have taught him patience, resilience, tolerance for failure, and a love of pursuing beauty and mastery for its own sake.