Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. When I have
Speaker 1: been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
Speaker 1: I did lose the room, they did leave. I saw
Speaker 1: her light up and I was like, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to work, but we are here until one of our
Speaker 1: last grips. I was just the one that was meant
Speaker 1: to take care of mamma. It's for me to remember
Speaker 1: every single day is that I always have a choice.
Speaker 1: Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't,
Speaker 1: or there's no rules for you, or you have to
Speaker 1: look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli, or should I say welcome
Speaker 1: back to Go ask Alli. We had a quick little
Speaker 1: hiatus during the holiday season where I had the flu
Speaker 1: for two weeks. But now I'm back and will be
Speaker 1: even better. Okay, So I did ask you through social
Speaker 1: media to tell me some of the hobbies or interests
Speaker 1: or skills you developed during COVID, and throughout this whole show,
Speaker 1: we will be blasting some of them out because some
Speaker 1: of them are doozies. Mine was clamming and my guest
Speaker 1: Today has a Goodie. Peggy Orgstein is a New York
Speaker 1: Times bestselling author, award winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker
Speaker 1: on gender issues, especially those related to teen sex and relationships.
Speaker 1: Now I'm sure you guys remember Peggy because she joined
Speaker 1: me in our first season for an episode called The Talk.
Speaker 1: Peggy is a frequent contributor to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: and it's written for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post,
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, lots more. She's appeared on NPR, PBS, and
Speaker 1: all the network morning shows. She's written eight books, including
Speaker 1: the new one that brings her here Today, Unraveling what
Speaker 1: I learned about life while sharing sheep, dying wool, and
Speaker 1: making the World's Ugliest sweater. This is so nice of you.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to talk to you again. I I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to talk to you because the last time
Speaker 1: I talked to you, we were in the pandemic and
Speaker 1: we were talking about girls and sex and boys and
Speaker 1: sex and lots of sex. And then I talked to
Speaker 1: you later, just on the phone, about adult sex. And
Speaker 1: so when I heard you had a new book coming out,
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, this is the adult sex book. Okay,
Speaker 1: good we're going to talk about dry vaginas and menopausal
Speaker 1: sex and sex after sixty. And then I got this
Speaker 1: book in the mail called Unraveling, and I went, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting title for a sex book, and was pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised and really dove into this book because I too
Speaker 1: had written a COVID book called Allie's Well that ends well.
Speaker 1: You discovered the art of sharing a sheep and die
Speaker 1: and making a sweater. I discovered clamming. So we found
Speaker 1: our purpose in life, both of us. Um So for me,
Speaker 1: clamming was the way I didn't just make sour dough
Speaker 1: like you say in your book. So let's just dive
Speaker 1: into this because I have girlfriends and I've said I
Speaker 1: Peggy Orangeine coming on my podcast. We're talking about sharing
Speaker 1: sheep and they were like, I'm in. I'm in so um.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I want to interweave this age
Speaker 1: old art with parental death and parental like everything that
Speaker 1: I too am experiencing, because it is something that every
Speaker 1: human will experience at some point. And um, I'm interested
Speaker 1: to know how, besides your book, how you're dealing with
Speaker 1: all of it. But let's start with the clearest question,
Speaker 1: how did you decide to shear sheep? How did that
Speaker 1: even come about? You live in northern California, plenty of
Speaker 1: other things to do? Why that I didn't have plenty
Speaker 1: of other things to do. We had this little thing
Speaker 1: called luckdown that kicked in. You know, it's it's been
Speaker 1: a I say this in the book. I say, my
Speaker 1: editor wants me to have a reason for this, and
Speaker 1: I don't really have one. I've been a lifelong knitter,
Speaker 1: and I think you get when you're a fiber person.
Speaker 1: Even as I'm talking to I'm like, I'm like stroking
Speaker 1: the sweater that I'm wearing, because you you get very
Speaker 1: like tactile, this love of the tactile. And I think
Speaker 1: that you just start thinking about garments. You're thinking about
Speaker 1: where they come from. And also I'm the granddaughter of
Speaker 1: um Jewish homesteaders from North Dakota, which is probably the
Speaker 1: topic of a whole different book. Um, I've always had
Speaker 1: this fantasy. It's just been like a long held fantasy
Speaker 1: of wanting to make the sweater from scratch, starting with
Speaker 1: learning to shear sheep, which I thought was going to
Speaker 1: be easy. And uh, and I never have time, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a life and work and a child and
Speaker 1: a husband and all this stuff. And and there's one
Speaker 1: sheep shearing class in northern California once a year, and weirdly, um,
Speaker 1: if I was going to be home for it, which
Speaker 1: I almost never was, it would sell out online within
Speaker 1: thirty I don't know who these people are, but there
Speaker 1: was a lot of people that wanted to learn how
Speaker 1: to shear sheep, which was I mean, really, shearing a
Speaker 1: sheep was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Well, first of all, who knew
Speaker 1: that they were slippery? You say, they're like toddlers with
Speaker 1: hooves because of the lanolin. I had no idea. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. They're they're incredibly LUs you know, they're
Speaker 1: way more than you do. And they've got hooves and
Speaker 1: they don't want to be there. And the blade that
Speaker 1: you're using has no safety and it's just like juttering
Speaker 1: thing that's moving really really fast, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I just sort of, you know, drawl a lot, like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I want to just shear a sheep. Um. It was
Speaker 1: just lucrit. It was it was madness, honestly, but it
Speaker 1: was also an amazing experience, and so it was really hard.
Speaker 1: I mean I sort of thought, yeah, I'll just find
Speaker 1: a sheep and share it. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: They only are shot in certain times of year. People
Speaker 1: do it, they don't, you know. I mean, there's it's
Speaker 1: like a whole it's an industry, it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: So tell me, So where do you found the sheep?
Speaker 1: So in Sonoma? So I mean all of this the
Speaker 1: background of all so we got mac um. Like here,
Speaker 1: I was nothing but sort of anxiety and depression. And
Speaker 1: the only thing that was calling me down was like knitting,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to my mom, except my mom is dead.
Speaker 1: So I'm having these ongoing conversations with my mother in
Speaker 1: my head because she and I, you know, always adknit
Speaker 1: together and she your mom taught you, taught me in
Speaker 1: net and that was so common. Almost everybody that I met,
Speaker 1: their mom talked them to knit. It was like a
Speaker 1: real it's a real connection or their grandmother, but usually
Speaker 1: their mother between mothers and daughters. And so I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that. Meanwhile, my dad, his dementia is getting
Speaker 1: worse in lockdown. He's in Minneapolis. I'm in Berkeley. Even
Speaker 1: if I could get on a plane. I couldn't go
Speaker 1: in where he is because we're not allowed, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like everything is, and my daughter's pulling out
Speaker 1: her college applications and I'm thinking about the empty nest.
Speaker 1: My husband is retiring, so like all the transitions are
Speaker 1: coming at me right at lockdown. So, um, I do
Speaker 1: the clover thing. I decided to share a sheep, and uh,
Speaker 1: as one would, right, Yeah, I wish I thought of it.
Speaker 1: I went clamming, but yeah I should have. I should
Speaker 1: have shared a sheet. Clamming would be good. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think we have plans, but that sounds good to me.
Speaker 1: So so I really wanted to learn. This whole book
Speaker 1: is also the story I really concert focused on women
Speaker 1: and as teachers for every step of the way, on
Speaker 1: sharing and spinning and processing and dying and all of it.
Speaker 1: I made sure that all my teachers were women because
Speaker 1: I wanted to look at women's work and women's art
Speaker 1: and women's connections and sharing is over men. And they
Speaker 1: keep talking about how, oh there's so much more women
Speaker 1: and sharing. That's because it used to be men. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more, but there's none. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those professions you know like seafaring or you know
Speaker 1: hedge funds or that that basically put a no girl's
Speaker 1: allowed sign on the door. And because of the tools.
Speaker 1: Is that why, I think, you know, not necessarily. I
Speaker 1: think it's partly like this cowboy image that it does.
Speaker 1: It's this, um I mean, it doesn't have the romance
Speaker 1: exactly of cowboys, but it's this sort of lone wolf
Speaker 1: and it's hard. It's really physical, super super I mean,
Speaker 1: I cannot emphasize I cannot emphasize how physical it is.
Speaker 1: And some sheep are huge. Um, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, physical labor involved and it just became
Speaker 1: masculine and like a lot of things it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: the other things I'd say, you know, law or medicine.
Speaker 1: Women have challenged so they aren't so much no girls
Speaker 1: allowed anymore. But this state has stayed that way. I
Speaker 1: think because of the physicality and also because you have
Speaker 1: to travel a lot to be a sheep share. So
Speaker 1: I think a lot of women it just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: that appealing. Um. But uh, there used to be in
Speaker 1: Australia when a woman approached the shearing shed, they yelled
Speaker 1: ducks on the pond. I don't know why, Like it's
Speaker 1: such a weird like one of these and then they're
Speaker 1: supposed to, like I don't know, put away their porn
Speaker 1: and pull up their pants so their ascracks don't show
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know, but it was it's such
Speaker 1: a misogyny. It was just basically misogyny. Um. So being
Speaker 1: a woman sheep share is still really air and and
Speaker 1: kind of political. So I found Laura and Kaid who
Speaker 1: is a teacher. She is a teacher of sheep sharing
Speaker 1: and she is um also manages organic produce farms and
Speaker 1: she's thirty and you know, just like you want to
Speaker 1: be her. She's so cool. So she she was the
Speaker 1: one who taught me. And yeah, like I said, it is,
Speaker 1: it's just grueling. Okay, well you tell me. I mean
Speaker 1: she could cheer a sheep in three minutes. You have
Speaker 1: to shoot. You have to get the sheep out of
Speaker 1: the pen right first of all. First of all, they
Speaker 1: don't want to you know, I mean, their prey animals,
Speaker 1: so they don't want you to beat near them. So
Speaker 1: they're all packed in one and then you've got to
Speaker 1: back them out of the pen. You gotta flip them
Speaker 1: on their backs. You've got to drag them into the pen.
Speaker 1: And none of this, by the way, I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, none of this hurts the sheep. And the
Speaker 1: sheep has to be shorn. It's really important that cheaper.
Speaker 1: There's like during one of the things that happened during
Speaker 1: the pandemic was that um they in Australia somewhere they
Speaker 1: found this sheep that had been it had gone rogue
Speaker 1: and it hadn't been shorn, you know, it wasn't out
Speaker 1: in the wild, and it was like nine years or something.
Speaker 1: It had ninety pounds. I think it was a fleece
Speaker 1: on it and it became a TikTok sensation. Of course
Speaker 1: it did, of course it did. So the shearing of
Speaker 1: the sheep where they took off it maybe seventy nine
Speaker 1: pounds I can't remember of wool off the sheep. And
Speaker 1: you look at this poor sheep. It couldn't eat. It
Speaker 1: was starving. So it's really important that they're shoring. We've
Speaker 1: bred them over over millennia. They weren't originally like that,
Speaker 1: but we've reread them to be wooly, so they need sharing.
Speaker 1: Are they dirty, Yes, they're awful of like pooh, and yeah, muck,
Speaker 1: and yeah you're not. You're not shearing off a white
Speaker 1: kashmere coat. No, but it's pretty underneath. You can see
Speaker 1: pretty clearly the I mean, it's just the top layer
Speaker 1: that's all yucky, and then you shear it down. And
Speaker 1: but I mean, I was terrible at it, and and
Speaker 1: the first one took me an hour and a half
Speaker 1: and it was just like a disaster. And I did three,
Speaker 1: and the last one was Martha. Martha. She was one
Speaker 1: of the only ones I had a name, and she's
Speaker 1: the one I ended up whose whose fleece I ended
Speaker 1: up using for my sweater. You write in your book
Speaker 1: that some man there's like a Guinness Book of World
Speaker 1: Record for sharing a sheep, and it was it was
Speaker 1: like I wrote it seconds or something. Yeah, it was seconds.
Speaker 1: I don't know how he does that. Thirty seven point
Speaker 1: nine seconds. Yeah, that's InCred I can see it online.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah, And then you think it took me
Speaker 1: an hour and a half, so by comparison, just because
Speaker 1: you're because it's terrifying. First of all, it's hard, but
Speaker 1: it's also terrified. And I cut myself up and it
Speaker 1: looked like a crime scene. And luckily didn't cut the sheep.
Speaker 1: But and it's it's hard to see and and if
Speaker 1: its senses, like when when Laura, my teacher, would do it,
Speaker 1: that sheep just laid there like a rag doll. I
Speaker 1: mean she you know, it was perfectly content. But those
Speaker 1: sheep knew that I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And the second they said that it's all open, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd be scared shitless too. Then yes, here's this crazy lady.
Speaker 1: The first time she's holding a sheer. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: be me. I get it. It's just like a New
Speaker 1: Yorker cartoon exactly. Yeah, it was there and there people
Speaker 1: are constantly sending me shearing. You'd be surprised how many
Speaker 1: sheep New Yorker coaches there, I'm sure. And the sheep
Speaker 1: is slippery, right, and the sheep is clippery. That's it's
Speaker 1: covered with lannel in which you probably used when you
Speaker 1: were nursing your children on my nipples. Yeah, yep, same stuff.
Speaker 1: This is like rodeo stuff. When you talk about this,
Speaker 1: that's what it's. That's the image that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny that you say that, because, in fact,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was a rodeo writer, and I have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a rodeo thing. Yeah, obviously you are
Speaker 1: taking care of this sheep, but in you know, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing you with a lasso with the sheep on its
Speaker 1: back and you're roping up the hoofs and everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just my image. Nah, okay. And you repeat many
Speaker 1: times in your book belly crutch, undermine, topknot neck, cheek, first, shoulder,
Speaker 1: short blows, longbows, last side. What is that besides your
Speaker 1: mantra for getting through COVID? It would because yeah, No,
Speaker 1: there's a very subt order that you share sheep that
Speaker 1: is safest for the animal, most ergonomic, sets the animal
Speaker 1: up to be able to just walk away when it's done,
Speaker 1: and gives you the best place. And it was developed
Speaker 1: by this guy in New Zealand who was called the
Speaker 1: Neureas of sharing. Yes I love that quote. Yes, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there's a very set way that you
Speaker 1: do it. Um that you know that starts with the belly,
Speaker 1: which is where the teeths are and where the vulva is,
Speaker 1: and that that I mean, that's the scary to me.
Speaker 1: That was like, oh my god. At one point with
Speaker 1: one of my sheep. I just froze. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I had to have the teacher to it. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. Those are delicate bits with the
Speaker 1: you don't want to do anything wrong there. The planning
Speaker 1: is fabulous. But I wanted to share that. During COVID
Speaker 1: because we have a place in Maine that is on
Speaker 1: the coast, we discovered UM doing some oystering. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if that's a bird. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: and we're back. I took up painting, particularly portrait painting,
Speaker 1: and I found I was actually quite good at it,
Speaker 1: and I'm very proud of myself. It got me through
Speaker 1: the pandemic and I've actually started to sell a little
Speaker 1: bit of my work. I identified the fact that I
Speaker 1: do have what it takes to become a published author.
Speaker 1: My book is actually coming out in five weeks, and
Speaker 1: it's taken twenty years to write because I write about
Speaker 1: being an ex stripper in Waikiki, my hometown from seven
Speaker 1: and I've just been trying to write this story for
Speaker 1: years and years. Took a lot of therapy to go
Speaker 1: back to those rough places. All right, so you have
Speaker 1: your fluff, and now what's the next step. So next
Speaker 1: you have to you I mean, it's it's filthy, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have to clean it, which is the most
Speaker 1: tedious part of the process. It's a lot of hauling
Speaker 1: of water. I mean, unless you have a dedicated setup,
Speaker 1: which of course I don't, a lot of heating water
Speaker 1: and hauling it out to the deck. And if you
Speaker 1: would get it too hot, the fleece kind of maths.
Speaker 1: It's called felting, and then it's useless. Then you've got
Speaker 1: to go get a new fleece. And then after you
Speaker 1: do that, you have to card it, which you've probably seen,
Speaker 1: like when you were a kid and we're learning about
Speaker 1: pioneers or something. You take two things look like dog brushes,
Speaker 1: and you have to make the fleece all nice and
Speaker 1: fluffy and laying in the same direction. And that's also
Speaker 1: a really boring process. And I think in the past
Speaker 1: women would do this when they were doing other stuff.
Speaker 1: But I was so worried about all of it that
Speaker 1: I had to focus. But what it did it was
Speaker 1: interesting because I really when I was doing this book,
Speaker 1: you know, I imagined it was going to bring up
Speaker 1: a lot around my mom's death. Of course, my mom
Speaker 1: had died a few years earlier, and like and you know,
Speaker 1: we had, I mean, like all of it. We had.
Speaker 1: I love my mom, and we had a lot of
Speaker 1: conflict and there was a lot of issues, but we
Speaker 1: could always we could always be fine in a in
Speaker 1: a yarn store, you know, we could always look at patterns,
Speaker 1: touch the yarn, talk about it. And knitting was the
Speaker 1: thing that she I mean, my mom was a very
Speaker 1: conventional style housewife. And not that there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1: It was a fine thing. It worked for her, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't who I was, and she was not, maybe
Speaker 1: in that sense, the best fit for being sort of, um,
Speaker 1: somebody who could guide me as a as a woman,
Speaker 1: and that was always sort of a sad thing for me.
Speaker 1: But I always could get her advice on a on
Speaker 1: a complicated sweater, you know, she was always down for that,
Speaker 1: and that was great. So I imagined and I knew,
Speaker 1: and it did bring up a lot of um, sadness
Speaker 1: and happiness, joyful memories, sad memories of my mom. I
Speaker 1: didn't imagine doing this was gonna has bring up so
Speaker 1: much with my dad, Um, who you know, had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with with knitting or yard or anything. When
Speaker 1: I was going up. But he subsequently has died, but
Speaker 1: at that point he was in a facility is demensional,
Speaker 1: was accelerating. It was the pandemic. We couldn't see him.
Speaker 1: It was really hard, but his aid would um, we
Speaker 1: would face time, and for him, he thought that I
Speaker 1: was um in the room with him. When I was
Speaker 1: faced that, he'd asked me, you know, can you hand
Speaker 1: me at the water peg. I'd be like, well, that
Speaker 1: can't reach it. But I could sit and slow down,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, it was I think when
Speaker 1: your dad, when your parents has cognitive impairment and you're
Speaker 1: far away, it's hard on a lot of levels. But
Speaker 1: it's also hard because you can't connect. They can't really
Speaker 1: you can't have a conversation with them. You can't talk
Speaker 1: to them. Um. I have a father with advanced Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: and it's a very it's a difficult thing because when
Speaker 1: I see him, I can hold his hand. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if he knows it's me. And you start
Speaker 1: to feel like this is actually for me, not for them,
Speaker 1: you know, because I don't know if he knows who
Speaker 1: I am. And and it's also you know, it's a
Speaker 1: very surreal experience, because when your parents has faded away
Speaker 1: in so many different ways and you're suddenly a parent
Speaker 1: to this child, you know, it's a very It does
Speaker 1: bring up a lot, I mean a lot. So yes,
Speaker 1: I I completely identify with what you're talking about. I
Speaker 1: started feeling, you know, as I was saying, because it
Speaker 1: could slow me down enough. And he was watching at
Speaker 1: that time, the Twins that he's in Minneapolis, the baseball team.
Speaker 1: They were showing reruns where they always won, and he
Speaker 1: was a little better. I mean, things got, you know,
Speaker 1: that progressively worse, but he could enjoy that game. He did.
Speaker 1: He thought they were live and he thought they were
Speaker 1: winning because of something he was doing with his walker.
Speaker 1: He was still on a walker that that could be true.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't tell me, well, we don't know, that's not true.
Speaker 1: He said it was a trade secret. He wouldn't tell
Speaker 1: me what. But but I felt it started feeling to me.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you just felt this way
Speaker 1: to you, um, but that that time spent with him,
Speaker 1: it felt almost like a spiritual practice to degree, and
Speaker 1: like a way to express a kind of unconditional love
Speaker 1: that I frankly didn't feel when he was more of himself,
Speaker 1: and to just be there, um and and be with
Speaker 1: him and witness it. And at one point later I
Speaker 1: talked about how we would watch he loved Laurel and Hardy,
Speaker 1: which I hated, but I would screen share. And I
Speaker 1: started looking at those videos and thinking, you know, these
Speaker 1: came out when he was a little boy, and this
Speaker 1: was what the world looked like back then, and he
Speaker 1: was I could imagine him at like ten or eight
Speaker 1: in the movie theater, the magic of that screen and
Speaker 1: watching this. And I just sat there and tried to,
Speaker 1: you know, love that little boy like you said, um.
Speaker 1: And it gave me a lot. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if I hadn't been sitting there during the pandemic, carding
Speaker 1: fleece of all things, if I would have gotten there
Speaker 1: right and look at that, Look at the two different
Speaker 1: connections with your parents during this period. I mean, you
Speaker 1: had the knitting with your mom and the ability to
Speaker 1: be still and connect with your father. Did you ever
Speaker 1: show your father what you were doing, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have been able to wrap his head around
Speaker 1: what you were doing. On your death, Yeah, he didn't understand.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the noise bugged him the carding, They're like, they
Speaker 1: like they look like dog brushes. So there's these metal
Speaker 1: things and you're kind of brushing them against each other,
Speaker 1: so they make a sort of you know, metal on
Speaker 1: metal noise, So that kind of bugged him. I have
Speaker 1: to ask too, how is your husband and Daisy feeling
Speaker 1: about this venture? Did they were they like your crazy
Speaker 1: stop at Peggy makes him chilly instead? Or how did
Speaker 1: they go through this? They were I mean, they know me.
Speaker 1: They weren't shocked. Um yeah, but yeah, I mean different
Speaker 1: points they were just like the spinning wheel when I
Speaker 1: when I had to buy a spinning wheel to spin
Speaker 1: my fleece, and they were like, don't bring one of
Speaker 1: those giant spinning wheels in here. We don't have a
Speaker 1: very big house. Um And the dying, Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of smells involved. Yeah, so let's let me
Speaker 1: ask you about that. Did they really smell like figs
Speaker 1: and mildew and all those kinds of things you described?
Speaker 1: So I tried to do these different things with it,
Speaker 1: um and and and eventually I kind of just didn't
Speaker 1: but I and I got very interested in I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of this book is also about sort of
Speaker 1: lare and history and how these things came to be
Speaker 1: and and the sort of um, all these things about color.
Speaker 1: I mean, I yeah, that's so fascinated by the nature
Speaker 1: of color and by color as a social construct, which
Speaker 1: is like blew my mind. And initially I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to do this hyperlocal thing. Um, I want
Speaker 1: to die using colors that I can walk to and pluck.
Speaker 1: So like I have had a we we've moved DELI
Speaker 1: I had down the hill, down the hill. So the
Speaker 1: other thing that was going on during the pandemic, there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on in this book underneath all the
Speaker 1: sheep was I live in northern California and the state
Speaker 1: was burning, and I lived in a high risk fire
Speaker 1: zone and it was so incredibly stressful and and I
Speaker 1: was so very very anxious. And we would get um
Speaker 1: told that we had to be ready to avoid. You know,
Speaker 1: there were a few really serious times where they said, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be um this like the wind that only
Speaker 1: happens once every hundred years, and it's coming and it's hot,
Speaker 1: and if something, if there's a spark wor all, we're
Speaker 1: all done for and pack your bags, you know. So
Speaker 1: we're like packing our stuff and on one end, and
Speaker 1: it brought up a couple of things. One was I
Speaker 1: noticed my daughter. One of her preciousness that sheep act
Speaker 1: was her tallest bag, her Jewish prayer show her about
Speaker 1: Mitzvah and her prayer shawl. My husband's Japanese American and
Speaker 1: we had made her palace out of a vintage wedding
Speaker 1: kimono that that a friend made for us, and then
Speaker 1: we tied the knots on it ourselves, and then I
Speaker 1: made the bag for it and needle pointed it with
Speaker 1: a pattern of pomegranates for fruitful life. Um. And it
Speaker 1: made me realize when she grabbed that, and you know,
Speaker 1: she doesn't really go to temple anymore anything, but it
Speaker 1: was important to her. How you know, textile has such
Speaker 1: meaning to us, and that was you know that that
Speaker 1: she chose that really meant something to me. And then
Speaker 1: I had to go cry for a while. And then um,
Speaker 1: I was standing crying and looking out the window. And
Speaker 1: we have a fig tree in our front had a
Speaker 1: fig tree in our front yard, which was one of
Speaker 1: the things that charmed me about our home when we
Speaker 1: bought it years ago. So I decided to harvest the
Speaker 1: fig leaves and use those to make very Middle Earth
Speaker 1: colored um die. And it smells kind of faking, kind
Speaker 1: of and kind of like ish and kind of like
Speaker 1: rotten Christmas. And so Daisy was just like disgusting. And
Speaker 1: Steve and my husband, I first said, oh, it's good
Speaker 1: that he was like, m no, actually it is disgusting um.
Speaker 1: Not a candle we want to have. Yeah, So I did,
Speaker 1: fig I did. I did a bunch of stuff from
Speaker 1: my yard in my neighborhood. But you know, all the
Speaker 1: colors were basically either yellow or putrid um. And you
Speaker 1: say that beats beat dies is actually really hard. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's just that it fades. So it's called fugitive um,
Speaker 1: which sounds like it's um on the lamp, sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a prisoner, but it means it's it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna flee, right, so you wash it, but it's going
Speaker 1: to go away. So people don't use beat die. So
Speaker 1: I started getting into all these other colors. I still
Speaker 1: use natural diyes, but I sent a wave on the
Speaker 1: internet for them because I got tired of the pellett.
Speaker 1: I know what, I what I confused it with. You
Speaker 1: write that it was so hard to do. Purple purple
Speaker 1: is very hard. Purple purple what used to be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, royal, obviously we all know that, but why
Speaker 1: because it was such a difficult dye to make and
Speaker 1: it had to be made from the excretions of a
Speaker 1: snail butt that was in what is now Lebanon. That's
Speaker 1: not a lot of die. How many snail butts does?
Speaker 1: It take? About two fifty for an ounce, And so
Speaker 1: it was very, very very expensive. It was worth more
Speaker 1: than good. It was rare and the color that they
Speaker 1: were really going for was a color that looked like
Speaker 1: clotted blood, which is not so attractive to me. So
Speaker 1: so what I did use in the end chips from
Speaker 1: a logwood tree, which is a Brazilian sustainable tree. But
Speaker 1: it is a little fugitive, so you don't want to
Speaker 1: be out this on a lot with it. But it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful color. I'd show it to you, except um,
Speaker 1: I actually sent the sweater to Vogue Knitting to photograph
Speaker 1: and they still have it that I hope they didn't
Speaker 1: lose it. Now they didn't lose you know, I'm sort
Speaker 1: of fascinated by the whole project and the ritual and
Speaker 1: it dies and the spinning. All of it is fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. But it's an incredibly poignant book because you
Speaker 1: discussed so many other things. You do. You discuss aging,
Speaker 1: you talk about empty nesting, you talk about your parents. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many layers and context to it. It's clearly
Speaker 1: not just how to share a sheet. Yeah. What was else?
Speaker 1: Was weird about it? Was? It really fount me thinking
Speaker 1: about um? I mean, you know, environmental anxiety, climate anxiety
Speaker 1: was part of this too. But like we are so conscious.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm sure you are. I know I am
Speaker 1: of like the organic produce and um yep, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure that you're driving your hybrid car and recycling
Speaker 1: and composting if you are in accomposting place, of doing
Speaker 1: all these things. But we never think about fashion. We
Speaker 1: don't think about our clothe never. And that was a
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, what how are they are made? Who's
Speaker 1: making them? No? Synthetic die? Yeah, all of it. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating when wrote that in your book, I thought, I
Speaker 1: never think about that. I never thought about it. I
Speaker 1: think about everything else. I do not think about the
Speaker 1: things that I you know, our armor put on your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you think about what goes in it goes in
Speaker 1: your body, but not what goes on it. And that
Speaker 1: was I mean, knowing about it. I went through a
Speaker 1: period when I was writing this where first of all,
Speaker 1: I just was like, I can't just buy a pair
Speaker 1: of pants, just not a pair of fan you know,
Speaker 1: but I I I kind of couldn't go into a store.
Speaker 1: I mean even once we could go into stores again,
Speaker 1: I just would see all those synthetic which is plastic, right,
Speaker 1: all the synthetics, so all these plastic clothes and think
Speaker 1: about where they were going to end up. And I
Speaker 1: was I became like kind of hysterical and uh, and
Speaker 1: I would have to leave. I've gotten I mean not
Speaker 1: that I'm better and now I don't care anymore, but
Speaker 1: I've I've got a grip. Um. Well you can't you
Speaker 1: can't un know it. You know, you can't unno it.
Speaker 1: And and it really makes me think hard. And I
Speaker 1: do think really hard about what I bought. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting too, because like when we were young, you went
Speaker 1: shopping maybe like twice a year, when you know, would
Speaker 1: be like back to school, yeah, back to school and
Speaker 1: was spread. But but fast fashion has so changed our
Speaker 1: our relationship and our perception of clothing and shopping that
Speaker 1: we don't even think about the fact that we're buying
Speaker 1: clothing constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly, um, and most of it's
Speaker 1: made of plastic and all that just I don't know.
Speaker 1: So now my daughter, probably your daughters too, they buy
Speaker 1: a lot of thrift. And I think that kids who girls,
Speaker 1: girls particularly boys, don't buy as much stuff girls who
Speaker 1: are conscious in this way. And I think our daughters
Speaker 1: are much more conscious than we are. When I started
Speaker 1: talking to my daughter about all of this, she already
Speaker 1: knew about all of it. She was sending me websites
Speaker 1: like good on You and you know where I could
Speaker 1: check things, and she knew it all. And if we
Speaker 1: just never discussed it, um, and she buys a lot
Speaker 1: more thrift. Yeah. I I started doing that too when
Speaker 1: I became conscious of it. And also the idea of
Speaker 1: the amount of money I would spend on something that
Speaker 1: was quote unquote cool or in where I could go
Speaker 1: in the real reel, you know, and get a cocktail dress.
Speaker 1: You know. But a friend of mine gave me a
Speaker 1: coat a couple of Christmas is ago that was all
Speaker 1: made out of recycled bottles, which I know sounds completely bizarre.
Speaker 1: It is the most comfortable coat I've ever owned, and
Speaker 1: so that was my first little window. What oh god,
Speaker 1: Peggy's making a face, Hi, Ali. I learned how to
Speaker 1: cook Hungarian food during COVID. My mama taught me all
Speaker 1: my grandma's recipes, and I know them all by heart now,
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful because the year later, my mom
Speaker 1: passed away, and if we hadn't had COVID, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have these memories to carry with me. Here's and it's
Speaker 1: time for a short welcome back to go ask Galley
Speaker 1: during COVID. This isn't response to your COVID Instagram. I
Speaker 1: became a hiker. I had always loved a hike, and
Speaker 1: I decided um that I would start climbing mountains. Um
Speaker 1: stead of sitting home and being sad and missing my
Speaker 1: husband who had passed away, I took myself outside and
Speaker 1: I dragged my fifty eight year old self up mountains
Speaker 1: and I never felt prouder or more empowered. What's the face? No,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't like that, So it's not. It's kind of brown,
Speaker 1: kind of like a kind of like a half dead
Speaker 1: lawn First of all, it's gonna end up somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: gonna end up in landfull eventually anyway, and there you are.
Speaker 1: But also UM, it sheds micro fibers all that, all
Speaker 1: those UM recycled bottle things should these tecy tinsy invisible
Speaker 1: filaments all over the organic produce and when you wash them,
Speaker 1: UM tens of thousands of them go down your your
Speaker 1: clothes washer and they go right into the water supply.
Speaker 1: And they are the single biggest source of water pollution
Speaker 1: right now. So all right, I've stopped buying the platt
Speaker 1: You've got that one. So but the plastic bottle stuff
Speaker 1: is one of those choices that's not as bad as
Speaker 1: buying something that's made of what they call virgin materials.
Speaker 1: But it's not great. It's just a bunch of plastic bottles,
Speaker 1: that's what you're telling me. Okay, it's a bunch of
Speaker 1: plastic and it's and it's degrading and it's and it's
Speaker 1: getting into the wall I talk about in UM. How
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, we used to um
Speaker 1: on Rosa Shanna on the Jewishary year, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: throw your sins into the lake, and we would go
Speaker 1: to the lake in Minneapolis as a group our synagogue
Speaker 1: and throw our sins in, and I would think of like,
Speaker 1: down at the bottom of that lake, there's like this
Speaker 1: huge tary mass of generations of sins gathering. Microfibers are
Speaker 1: a little bit like okay, all right, good, all right,
Speaker 1: I've been educated. So no, no, no. So I love
Speaker 1: this quote your husband said to you, You're always trying
Speaker 1: to prove something unnecessary that no one cares about, to
Speaker 1: nobody in particular. And I love how you write about that.
Speaker 1: You are a bit of a perfectionist, right, You like
Speaker 1: to win. So this project that you started had to
Speaker 1: You had, first of all, had to finish it. There
Speaker 1: had to be closure, and you had to finish it well.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people would would I mean, just
Speaker 1: out on the deck dying the wool, would have given
Speaker 1: up and been on j cru dot com. So you
Speaker 1: have some grit to you that really pushed you through
Speaker 1: to the finish line. Yeah. I mean I would say
Speaker 1: a couple of things about that. I mean, that's my
Speaker 1: things about the one is Yeah, especially with the sharing.
Speaker 1: At one point, I mean, Laura, my cheering teacher, said
Speaker 1: to me, you're doing you know you've done really great.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's what I want to hear, really great him. Um,
Speaker 1: she said, most people are either crying or swearing by now,
Speaker 1: and I would have been except I kept thinking, I
Speaker 1: have to do this for work, and I can be
Speaker 1: a different person when I'm doing something for work than
Speaker 1: I can be if I'm not so knowing that I
Speaker 1: had to do this, because otherwise I was going to
Speaker 1: have to admit that I didn't. UM would push me through.
Speaker 1: So there was that, But I think what the real
Speaker 1: beauty for me, One of the big takeaways, and one
Speaker 1: of the real beauty of doing this project for me
Speaker 1: was being an amateur. And I was never going to
Speaker 1: be good at it. I was never gonna win. I
Speaker 1: was never going to be perfect. And at first, if
Speaker 1: you read the book, I'm always going I'm terrible and terrible, terrible.
Speaker 1: But by the time I got to the point where
Speaker 1: you're talking about, where my husband is saying, you're always
Speaker 1: trying to prove something you know to nobody in particular,
Speaker 1: I was starting to realize that UM, being able to
Speaker 1: be a beginner and finding joy in being a beginner
Speaker 1: is so rare at this time in our lives. Because
Speaker 1: we really want to be able to do what we
Speaker 1: want to be able to do. And I've always had
Speaker 1: for years, I've had on my wall this um Linda
Speaker 1: Barry cartoon that's about creativity and about the idea of
Speaker 1: how we learned shame around creativity and how there's this
Speaker 1: moment where you're doing whatever you're doing, you're drawing your stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're a little kid. You just draw right,
Speaker 1: and then somebody says that sucks, and suddenly you think, wait,
Speaker 1: what there's sucks and there's good uh, and then that's it.
Speaker 1: It's over and um and you live your life, you know.
Speaker 1: I always think about An Lamott when she wrote Bird
Speaker 1: by Bird. I don't know if you've ever read that book.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite books about creativity. She talks
Speaker 1: about the radio station k fucked KFKD that plays in
Speaker 1: your head and on right and when you're trying to
Speaker 1: do something like right or do your you know, your
Speaker 1: creative work. That on one hand, it's telling you like
Speaker 1: you're the greatest you, you deserve to be on the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestsell lists. On the other hand, it's taying,
Speaker 1: why did you think you could pick up a pencil,
Speaker 1: you completely untalented horror show, and you have to shut
Speaker 1: both those things up enough to do your work. And
Speaker 1: I've learned how to do that more or less as
Speaker 1: a writer, um, but to try to do something new
Speaker 1: was was hearing all that all over him and finally
Speaker 1: recognizing that it didn't matter if it was good, It
Speaker 1: didn't matter if it sucked. The question was what have
Speaker 1: I learned here? How how might I do it differently
Speaker 1: next time? What joy am I taking? And finding that
Speaker 1: I can make blue, that I can share a sheet,
Speaker 1: that I can take this fluff and turn it into
Speaker 1: into usable yarn um, and just that that was the
Speaker 1: I think the most valuable lesson of all for me
Speaker 1: was learning how to be um little se creative and
Speaker 1: be a beginner and and just enjoy that now at
Speaker 1: this age, well you know, as simple as it is.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes in life is the art
Speaker 1: is in the doing. It's not the finished project, it's
Speaker 1: everything you learned along the way, so and you did it.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. That's the thing. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of things that stop us women, particularly of our age,
Speaker 1: is that we go I'm not going to start that now.
Speaker 1: Had I started in my twenties. Maybe, but I think
Speaker 1: we would be even more extraordinary and fulfilled if we
Speaker 1: actually allowed ourselves to be beginners with certain things. Yeah so,
Speaker 1: and just that that that idea too. I mean process
Speaker 1: of a product, process of our product. If you can't
Speaker 1: learn that when you're pursuing something creative, you're never going
Speaker 1: to feel good about it, if you're all about the product.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't be about the product, and this because
Speaker 1: the product was going to be ugly, and and it's not.
Speaker 1: It actually isn't. I mean, when you see it, it's
Speaker 1: on the back of the book, so you'll be able
Speaker 1: to see what it looks like. There's a picture of it.
Speaker 1: If you when you see it just lying there on
Speaker 1: the floor, you'll think, oh, that's not so bad. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's cool that the colors are cool. I ended
Speaker 1: up making stripes. It looks fine laying on the ground.
Speaker 1: And and it is also, by the way, I don't
Speaker 1: know why, it weighs three pounds, which is about three
Speaker 1: times with a sweater, which I'll have these sweater would
Speaker 1: normally weigh so it is impossible to work. But it
Speaker 1: is hideous on my body. It makes me look like
Speaker 1: the giant pumpkin. I don't know partly because of I
Speaker 1: made it. I got. I ran a monk of my
Speaker 1: own body and its issues. Yeah. And when my UM
Speaker 1: person who is helping me learn how to design, kept saying,
Speaker 1: you need shaping, you should put shaping, and I kept saying, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. And so it stands out from
Speaker 1: my body you need I mean, you shouldn't try to
Speaker 1: pretend like you don't exist. Is basically the lesson of that,
Speaker 1: which was what I was doing. Well, yes, because by
Speaker 1: the way, again, women of our age are like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'll just wear a shmata. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't care exactly comfortable, but in fact there are vibr
Speaker 1: bodies underneath all this. So we don't need to wear
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown sweaters anymore. We can actually wear something that
Speaker 1: has some shape. It's okay, Yeah, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah. So, Peggy, I've asked you everything I
Speaker 1: could possibly ask you about sharing a sheep, But now
Speaker 1: it is your turn to ask me a question and
Speaker 1: go ask Ali and you can ask me anything you want.
Speaker 1: So what is the question you want to ask me today? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I just saw the movie Um, she said, yes,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you saw it the idea,
Speaker 1: And I am wondering your theory on why you think
Speaker 1: that movie did not do well in the box office.
Speaker 1: My theory is that everybody knows the story, so there's
Speaker 1: no surprises. Like when I saw Spotlight, for example, I
Speaker 1: didn't know the magnitude of abuse in Boston. You know.
Speaker 1: With this particular story, I feel like we've all read
Speaker 1: about it, We've all we know all the facts about it,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't a kind of surprise about it. I
Speaker 1: also think that a documentary would be a little stronger
Speaker 1: than a scripted movie about it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like when they had the fake Harvey Weinstein, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want, oh, that's some guy who kind of
Speaker 1: looked they're shooting him from behind. Like there were things
Speaker 1: that pulled me out of the story a little bit. Um,
Speaker 1: that's why I think it didn't. Why do you well,
Speaker 1: I think I thought that an actor that looked like
Speaker 1: however you want said, I thought, oh for him, Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't even get a line. Um. No, I thought
Speaker 1: it was because I actually liked the movie a lot.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was because men don't want to
Speaker 1: see it. So you got that. And then women I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be triggered by it, so they didn't
Speaker 1: want to see it either. That's interesting. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I think it was an audience problem though. I went
Speaker 1: with a bunch of girlfriends and I found that we
Speaker 1: we kind of cried all the way through it, not
Speaker 1: because of the story itself, but because whatever it was
Speaker 1: bringing up. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So it was
Speaker 1: actually I appreciated that. But that's my theory. Good. I
Speaker 1: like your theory. I just think everybody is a theory
Speaker 1: about it. Oh, I think you're I think your theory
Speaker 1: is right. Actually, now that I think about it, I
Speaker 1: was I was looking at it just from a producers standpoint,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. When I was watching it,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, we know all this, you know,
Speaker 1: I know how it ends. I know this. I know
Speaker 1: that I don't like. Again, when I said about the documentary,
Speaker 1: I don't like being pulled out of the story and
Speaker 1: the back of Harvey Weinstein and then the fake assistant
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow. There were things about it that I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you don't need to do that. You need to do that.
Speaker 1: I know that's anyway, thank you for the question, pleasure,
Speaker 1: thanks for answering. Okay, Peggy Orenstein, I love this book
Speaker 1: so much, I really do. I love it because it
Speaker 1: took me into a craft I had knew nothing about,
Speaker 1: so I got a historical education. It was certainly a
Speaker 1: personal journey that I think everybody will be able to
Speaker 1: connect to in one way or another. And it's beautifully written.
Speaker 1: It's really it's it's a it is a great book,
Speaker 1: and thank you for letting me read it, and thank
Speaker 1: you for letting me talk to you about it. And
Speaker 1: I know it's going to be a huge success. And
Speaker 1: if you ever share a sheep again, I would be
Speaker 1: very interested in coming along. I was gonna say you
Speaker 1: can join me. I'm actually very interested. I think I could.
Speaker 1: I think I could put together a group of post
Speaker 1: menopausal women that would love to share a sheep. So
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, super fun. I am fifty seven
Speaker 1: years old and living with metastatic stage for cancer for
Speaker 1: twelve years now. I guess you know. It was my
Speaker 1: new thing to be able to write the book and
Speaker 1: recrease my tenure at that time, battle with cancer during
Speaker 1: the pandemic at a teacher and being married to a coach.
Speaker 1: My husband and I were out of school for a while,
Speaker 1: so we would drop around. And here's red truck hashtag
Speaker 1: red Truck chronicles and eight pictures of the beautiful things
Speaker 1: we spotted in Niger. When I turned sixty, I decided
Speaker 1: every year I would take up a new hobby, or
Speaker 1: learn a new skill, or try something that I had
Speaker 1: been afraid to do. So one year I learned how
Speaker 1: to play poker, one year I took up pilates, I
Speaker 1: starting to play golf, and this year I am going
Speaker 1: to try force back riding. So I think it's great
Speaker 1: that you want to encourage people to try new skills,
Speaker 1: but I'm not ready for claiming thanks. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what my sweater would look like if I even tried
Speaker 1: to shear die and make a sweater. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I don't even think my husband could fake liking it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to go ask Gali. Peggy's new book,
Speaker 1: Unraveling What I Learned about Life while sharing Sheep, Dying Wool,
Speaker 1: and Making the World Ugliest Sweater is out now and
Speaker 1: you can find her on Instagram at p j Orenstein.
Speaker 1: And for more info on what you've heard in this episode.
Speaker 1: Check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate
Speaker 1: and review. Go ask Alli and follow me on social
Speaker 1: media on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and listen
Speaker 1: if you'd like to ask me a question or suggested
Speaker 1: guest or a topic to dig into. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and there is a bunch of
Speaker 1: ways you can do it. You can call or text
Speaker 1: me at three to three four six five six, or
Speaker 1: you can email a voice memo right from your phone
Speaker 1: to Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. And
Speaker 1: if you leave a question, you just might hear it.
Speaker 1: I'll go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production
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