Clara Parkes

“Long before social media cluttered every corner of our existence, Parkes’s conversational 411 about new yarns and interesting pattern designs forged connections among far-flung knitters, who discovered they were a global community rather than lone practitioners of a cozy hobby they’d learned from Mom.”

– KATHY BLUMENSTOCK, THE WASHINGTON POST

Author of seven books including the New York Times-bestselling KNITLANDIA, Clara has dedicated her life to exploring the stories behind, and qualities of, all the fibers that we wear on our bodies—and taking readers along for the journey. Through her writings, workshops, books, television and radio appearances, Clara has championed the notion of paying closer attention to what you knit and where it came from.

She turned passion into profession in 2000 when she launched KNITTER'S REVIEW, the first online knitting magazine and community.

Today she heads up THE WOOL CHANNEL, a multimedia platform dedicated to teaching and celebrating nature's original miracle fiber. She also writes THE DAILY RESPITE, a brief email newsletter called "an important newsletter for the times" by InsideHook.

Parkes divides her time between city and country in Maine, always writing from a desk in the kitchen.

“Through her woolly peregrinations, Parkes has become an unapologetic advocate for wool, a digital Cassandra in Allbirds, tweeting about the loss of this mill or that business, enjoining those of us who love the stuff — and can afford it — to not just consider the ‘food that goes into our bodies’ but also become ‘more mindful of what we put on them,’ because behind every skein of yarn there are dozens of stories.”

—LESLIE PETROVSKI, VOGUE KNITTING