The Gifts of Unraveling w/ Peggy Orenstein

Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't, or there's no rules for you, or you have to look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you. Welcome to Go ask Alli, or should I say welcome back to Go ask Alli. We had a quick little hiatus during the holiday season where I had the flu for two weeks. But now I'm back and will be

even better. Okay, So I did ask you through social media to tell me some of the hobbies or interests or skills you developed during COVID, and throughout this whole show, we will be blasting some of them out because some of them are doozies. Mine was clamming and my guest Today has a Goodie. Peggy Orgstein is a New York Times bestselling author, award winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker on gender issues, especially those related to teen sex and relationships.

Now I'm sure you guys remember Peggy because she joined me in our first season for an episode called The Talk. Peggy is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and it's written for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, lots more. She's appeared on NPR, PBS, and all the network morning shows. She's written eight books, including the new one that brings her here Today, Unraveling what I learned about life while sharing sheep, dying wool, and

making the World's Ugliest sweater. This is so nice of you. I'm so glad to talk to you again. I I'm so happy to talk to you because the last time I talked to you, we were in the pandemic and we were talking about girls and sex and boys and sex and lots of sex. And then I talked to you later, just on the phone, about adult sex. And so when I heard you had a new book coming out, I thought, Oh, this is the adult sex book. Okay, good we're going to talk about dry vaginas and menopausal

sex and sex after sixty. And then I got this book in the mail called Unraveling, and I went, that's an interesting title for a sex book, and was pleasantly surprised and really dove into this book because I too had written a COVID book called Allie's Well that ends well. You discovered the art of sharing a sheep and die and making a sweater. I discovered clamming. So we found our purpose in life, both of us. Um So for me, clamming was the way I didn't just make sour dough

like you say in your book. So let's just dive into this because I have girlfriends and I've said I Peggy Orangeine coming on my podcast. We're talking about sharing sheep and they were like, I'm in. I'm in so um. And by the way, I want to interweave this age old art with parental death and parental like everything that I too am experiencing, because it is something that every human will experience at some point. And um, I'm interested to know how, besides your book, how you're dealing with

all of it. But let's start with the clearest question, how did you decide to shear sheep? How did that even come about? You live in northern California, plenty of other things to do? Why that I didn't have plenty of other things to do. We had this little thing called luckdown that kicked in. You know, it's it's been a I say this in the book. I say, my editor wants me to have a reason for this, and

I don't really have one. I've been a lifelong knitter, and I think you get when you're a fiber person. Even as I'm talking to I'm like, I'm like stroking the sweater that I'm wearing, because you you get very like tactile, this love of the tactile. And I think that you just start thinking about garments. You're thinking about where they come from. And also I'm the granddaughter of um Jewish homesteaders from North Dakota, which is probably the topic of a whole different book. Um, I've always had

this fantasy. It's just been like a long held fantasy of wanting to make the sweater from scratch, starting with learning to shear sheep, which I thought was going to be easy. And uh, and I never have time, you know, I have a life and work and a child and

a husband and all this stuff. And and there's one sheep shearing class in northern California once a year, and weirdly, um, if I was going to be home for it, which I almost never was, it would sell out online within thirty I don't know who these people are, but there was a lot of people that wanted to learn how to shear sheep, which was I mean, really, shearing a sheep was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I had no idea. Well, first of all, who knew

that they were slippery? You say, they're like toddlers with hooves because of the lanolin. I had no idea. Yeah, no, I don't know. They're they're incredibly LUs you know, they're way more than you do. And they've got hooves and they don't want to be there. And the blade that you're using has no safety and it's just like juttering thing that's moving really really fast, and you know, and I just sort of, you know, drawl a lot, like, yeah, sure, I want to just shear a sheep. Um. It was

just lucrit. It was it was madness, honestly, but it was also an amazing experience, and so it was really hard. I mean I sort of thought, yeah, I'll just find a sheep and share it. It doesn't work that way. They only are shot in certain times of year. People do it, they don't, you know. I mean, there's it's like a whole it's an industry, it's a whole thing. So tell me, So where do you found the sheep? So in Sonoma? So I mean all of this the background of all so we got mac um. Like here,

I was nothing but sort of anxiety and depression. And the only thing that was calling me down was like knitting, and I'm talking to my mom, except my mom is dead. So I'm having these ongoing conversations with my mother in my head because she and I, you know, always adknit together and she your mom taught you, taught me in net and that was so common. Almost everybody that I met, their mom talked them to knit. It was like a real it's a real connection or their grandmother, but usually

their mother between mothers and daughters. And so I was thinking about that. Meanwhile, my dad, his dementia is getting worse in lockdown. He's in Minneapolis. I'm in Berkeley. Even if I could get on a plane. I couldn't go in where he is because we're not allowed, you know. I mean, like everything is, and my daughter's pulling out her college applications and I'm thinking about the empty nest. My husband is retiring, so like all the transitions are coming at me right at lockdown. So, um, I do

the clover thing. I decided to share a sheep, and uh, as one would, right, Yeah, I wish I thought of it. I went clamming, but yeah I should have. I should have shared a sheet. Clamming would be good. Yeah, I don't think we have plans, but that sounds good to me. So so I really wanted to learn. This whole book is also the story I really concert focused on women and as teachers for every step of the way, on sharing and spinning and processing and dying and all of it.

I made sure that all my teachers were women because I wanted to look at women's work and women's art and women's connections and sharing is over men. And they keep talking about how, oh there's so much more women and sharing. That's because it used to be men. So yeah, there's a lot more, but there's none. And it's one of those professions you know like seafaring or you know hedge funds or that that basically put a no girl's allowed sign on the door. And because of the tools.

Is that why, I think, you know, not necessarily. I think it's partly like this cowboy image that it does. It's this, um I mean, it doesn't have the romance exactly of cowboys, but it's this sort of lone wolf and it's hard. It's really physical, super super I mean, I cannot emphasize I cannot emphasize how physical it is.

And some sheep are huge. Um, so there's a lot of you know, physical labor involved and it just became masculine and like a lot of things it wasn't you know, the other things I'd say, you know, law or medicine. Women have challenged so they aren't so much no girls allowed anymore. But this state has stayed that way. I think because of the physicality and also because you have to travel a lot to be a sheep share. So I think a lot of women it just doesn't seem

that appealing. Um. But uh, there used to be in Australia when a woman approached the shearing shed, they yelled ducks on the pond. I don't know why, Like it's such a weird like one of these and then they're supposed to, like I don't know, put away their porn and pull up their pants so their ascracks don't show or something. I don't know, but it was it's such a misogyny. It was just basically misogyny. Um. So being a woman sheep share is still really air and and

kind of political. So I found Laura and Kaid who is a teacher. She is a teacher of sheep sharing and she is um also manages organic produce farms and she's thirty and you know, just like you want to be her. She's so cool. So she she was the one who taught me. And yeah, like I said, it is, it's just grueling. Okay, well you tell me. I mean she could cheer a sheep in three minutes. You have to shoot. You have to get the sheep out of

the pen right first of all. First of all, they don't want to you know, I mean, their prey animals, so they don't want you to beat near them. So they're all packed in one and then you've got to back them out of the pen. You gotta flip them on their backs. You've got to drag them into the pen. And none of this, by the way, I want to be clear, none of this hurts the sheep. And the sheep has to be shorn. It's really important that cheaper.

There's like during one of the things that happened during the pandemic was that um they in Australia somewhere they found this sheep that had been it had gone rogue and it hadn't been shorn, you know, it wasn't out in the wild, and it was like nine years or something. It had ninety pounds. I think it was a fleece on it and it became a TikTok sensation. Of course it did, of course it did. So the shearing of the sheep where they took off it maybe seventy nine

pounds I can't remember of wool off the sheep. And you look at this poor sheep. It couldn't eat. It was starving. So it's really important that they're shoring. We've bred them over over millennia. They weren't originally like that, but we've reread them to be wooly, so they need sharing. Are they dirty, Yes, they're awful of like pooh, and yeah, muck, and yeah you're not. You're not shearing off a white

kashmere coat. No, but it's pretty underneath. You can see pretty clearly the I mean, it's just the top layer that's all yucky, and then you shear it down. And but I mean, I was terrible at it, and and the first one took me an hour and a half and it was just like a disaster. And I did three, and the last one was Martha. Martha. She was one of the only ones I had a name, and she's the one I ended up whose whose fleece I ended

up using for my sweater. You write in your book that some man there's like a Guinness Book of World Record for sharing a sheep, and it was it was like I wrote it seconds or something. Yeah, it was seconds. I don't know how he does that. Thirty seven point nine seconds. Yeah, that's InCred I can see it online. It's crazy. Yeah, And then you think it took me an hour and a half, so by comparison, just because you're because it's terrifying. First of all, it's hard, but

it's also terrified. And I cut myself up and it looked like a crime scene. And luckily didn't cut the sheep. But and it's it's hard to see and and if its senses, like when when Laura, my teacher, would do it, that sheep just laid there like a rag doll. I mean she you know, it was perfectly content. But those sheep knew that I didn't know what I was doing. And the second they said that it's all open, yeah, I'd be scared shitless too. Then yes, here's this crazy lady.

The first time she's holding a sheer. It's not gonna be me. I get it. It's just like a New Yorker cartoon exactly. Yeah, it was there and there people are constantly sending me shearing. You'd be surprised how many sheep New Yorker coaches there, I'm sure. And the sheep is slippery, right, and the sheep is clippery. That's it's covered with lannel in which you probably used when you were nursing your children on my nipples. Yeah, yep, same stuff.

This is like rodeo stuff. When you talk about this, that's what it's. That's the image that comes to mind. You know, it's funny that you say that, because, in fact, my grandfather was a rodeo writer, and I have a little bit of a rodeo thing. Yeah, obviously you are taking care of this sheep, but in you know, I'm seeing you with a lasso with the sheep on its back and you're roping up the hoofs and everything. I mean,

that's just my image. Nah, okay. And you repeat many times in your book belly crutch, undermine, topknot neck, cheek, first, shoulder, short blows, longbows, last side. What is that besides your mantra for getting through COVID? It would because yeah, No, there's a very subt order that you share sheep that is safest for the animal, most ergonomic, sets the animal up to be able to just walk away when it's done,

and gives you the best place. And it was developed by this guy in New Zealand who was called the Neureas of sharing. Yes I love that quote. Yes, um. But yeah, so there's a very set way that you do it. Um that you know that starts with the belly, which is where the teeths are and where the vulva is, and that that I mean, that's the scary to me. That was like, oh my god. At one point with one of my sheep. I just froze. I couldn't do it. I had to have the teacher to it. Yeah, it's like,

I can't do this. Those are delicate bits with the you don't want to do anything wrong there. The planning is fabulous. But I wanted to share that. During COVID because we have a place in Maine that is on the coast, we discovered UM doing some oystering. I don't even know if that's a bird. We'll be right back, and we're back. I took up painting, particularly portrait painting, and I found I was actually quite good at it,

and I'm very proud of myself. It got me through the pandemic and I've actually started to sell a little bit of my work. I identified the fact that I do have what it takes to become a published author. My book is actually coming out in five weeks, and it's taken twenty years to write because I write about being an ex stripper in Waikiki, my hometown from seven and I've just been trying to write this story for years and years. Took a lot of therapy to go

back to those rough places. All right, so you have your fluff, and now what's the next step. So next you have to you I mean, it's it's filthy, yeah, so you have to clean it, which is the most tedious part of the process. It's a lot of hauling of water. I mean, unless you have a dedicated setup, which of course I don't, a lot of heating water and hauling it out to the deck. And if you would get it too hot, the fleece kind of maths. It's called felting, and then it's useless. Then you've got

to go get a new fleece. And then after you do that, you have to card it, which you've probably seen, like when you were a kid and we're learning about pioneers or something. You take two things look like dog brushes, and you have to make the fleece all nice and fluffy and laying in the same direction. And that's also a really boring process. And I think in the past women would do this when they were doing other stuff. But I was so worried about all of it that

I had to focus. But what it did it was interesting because I really when I was doing this book, you know, I imagined it was going to bring up a lot around my mom's death. Of course, my mom had died a few years earlier, and like and you know, we had, I mean, like all of it. We had. I love my mom, and we had a lot of conflict and there was a lot of issues, but we could always we could always be fine in a in a yarn store, you know, we could always look at patterns,

touch the yarn, talk about it. And knitting was the thing that she I mean, my mom was a very conventional style housewife. And not that there's anything wrong with that. It was a fine thing. It worked for her, but it wasn't who I was, and she was not, maybe in that sense, the best fit for being sort of, um, somebody who could guide me as a as a woman, and that was always sort of a sad thing for me.

But I always could get her advice on a on a complicated sweater, you know, she was always down for that, and that was great. So I imagined and I knew, and it did bring up a lot of um, sadness and happiness, joyful memories, sad memories of my mom. I didn't imagine doing this was gonna has bring up so much with my dad, Um, who you know, had nothing to do with with knitting or yard or anything. When

I was going up. But he subsequently has died, but at that point he was in a facility is demensional, was accelerating. It was the pandemic. We couldn't see him. It was really hard, but his aid would um, we would face time, and for him, he thought that I was um in the room with him. When I was faced that, he'd asked me, you know, can you hand me at the water peg. I'd be like, well, that

can't reach it. But I could sit and slow down, and it was you know, it was I think when your dad, when your parents has cognitive impairment and you're far away, it's hard on a lot of levels. But it's also hard because you can't connect. They can't really you can't have a conversation with them. You can't talk to them. Um. I have a father with advanced Alzheimer's and it's a very it's a difficult thing because when I see him, I can hold his hand. I don't

even know if he knows it's me. And you start to feel like this is actually for me, not for them, you know, because I don't know if he knows who I am. And and it's also you know, it's a very surreal experience, because when your parents has faded away in so many different ways and you're suddenly a parent to this child, you know, it's a very It does bring up a lot, I mean a lot. So yes,

I I completely identify with what you're talking about. I started feeling, you know, as I was saying, because it could slow me down enough. And he was watching at that time, the Twins that he's in Minneapolis, the baseball team. They were showing reruns where they always won, and he was a little better. I mean, things got, you know, that progressively worse, but he could enjoy that game. He did.

He thought they were live and he thought they were winning because of something he was doing with his walker. He was still on a walker that that could be true. You wouldn't tell me, well, we don't know, that's not true. He said it was a trade secret. He wouldn't tell me what. But but I felt it started feeling to me.

And I don't know if you just felt this way to you, um, but that that time spent with him, it felt almost like a spiritual practice to degree, and like a way to express a kind of unconditional love that I frankly didn't feel when he was more of himself, and to just be there, um and and be with him and witness it. And at one point later I talked about how we would watch he loved Laurel and Hardy,

which I hated, but I would screen share. And I started looking at those videos and thinking, you know, these came out when he was a little boy, and this was what the world looked like back then, and he was I could imagine him at like ten or eight in the movie theater, the magic of that screen and watching this. And I just sat there and tried to, you know, love that little boy like you said, um.

And it gave me a lot. And I don't know if I hadn't been sitting there during the pandemic, carding fleece of all things, if I would have gotten there right and look at that, Look at the two different connections with your parents during this period. I mean, you had the knitting with your mom and the ability to be still and connect with your father. Did you ever show your father what you were doing, because I'm sure he wouldn't have been able to wrap his head around

what you were doing. On your death, Yeah, he didn't understand. Sometimes the noise bugged him the carding, They're like, they like they look like dog brushes. So there's these metal things and you're kind of brushing them against each other, so they make a sort of you know, metal on metal noise, So that kind of bugged him. I have to ask too, how is your husband and Daisy feeling about this venture? Did they were they like your crazy stop at Peggy makes him chilly instead? Or how did

they go through this? They were I mean, they know me. They weren't shocked. Um yeah, but yeah, I mean different points they were just like the spinning wheel when I when I had to buy a spinning wheel to spin my fleece, and they were like, don't bring one of those giant spinning wheels in here. We don't have a very big house. Um And the dying, Yeah, there was a lot of smells involved. Yeah, so let's let me

ask you about that. Did they really smell like figs and mildew and all those kinds of things you described? So I tried to do these different things with it, um and and and eventually I kind of just didn't but I and I got very interested in I mean a lot of this book is also about sort of lare and history and how these things came to be and and the sort of um, all these things about color. I mean, I yeah, that's so fascinated by the nature of color and by color as a social construct, which

is like blew my mind. And initially I thought, Okay, I want to do this hyperlocal thing. Um, I want to die using colors that I can walk to and pluck. So like I have had a we we've moved DELI I had down the hill, down the hill. So the other thing that was going on during the pandemic, there's a lot going on in this book underneath all the sheep was I live in northern California and the state was burning, and I lived in a high risk fire zone and it was so incredibly stressful and and I

was so very very anxious. And we would get um told that we had to be ready to avoid. You know, there were a few really serious times where they said, Okay, there's gonna be um this like the wind that only happens once every hundred years, and it's coming and it's hot, and if something, if there's a spark wor all, we're all done for and pack your bags, you know. So we're like packing our stuff and on one end, and it brought up a couple of things. One was I

noticed my daughter. One of her preciousness that sheep act was her tallest bag, her Jewish prayer show her about Mitzvah and her prayer shawl. My husband's Japanese American and we had made her palace out of a vintage wedding kimono that that a friend made for us, and then we tied the knots on it ourselves, and then I made the bag for it and needle pointed it with

a pattern of pomegranates for fruitful life. Um. And it made me realize when she grabbed that, and you know, she doesn't really go to temple anymore anything, but it was important to her. How you know, textile has such meaning to us, and that was you know that that she chose that really meant something to me. And then I had to go cry for a while. And then um,

I was standing crying and looking out the window. And we have a fig tree in our front had a fig tree in our front yard, which was one of the things that charmed me about our home when we bought it years ago. So I decided to harvest the fig leaves and use those to make very Middle Earth colored um die. And it smells kind of faking, kind of and kind of like ish and kind of like

rotten Christmas. And so Daisy was just like disgusting. And Steve and my husband, I first said, oh, it's good that he was like, m no, actually it is disgusting um. Not a candle we want to have. Yeah, So I did, fig I did. I did a bunch of stuff from my yard in my neighborhood. But you know, all the colors were basically either yellow or putrid um. And you say that beats beat dies is actually really hard. No, no, no,

it's just that it fades. So it's called fugitive um, which sounds like it's um on the lamp, sounds like it's a prisoner, but it means it's it's gonna it's gonna flee, right, so you wash it, but it's going to go away. So people don't use beat die. So I started getting into all these other colors. I still use natural diyes, but I sent a wave on the internet for them because I got tired of the pellett. I know what, I what I confused it with. You write that it was so hard to do. Purple purple

is very hard. Purple purple what used to be uh, you know, royal, obviously we all know that, but why because it was such a difficult dye to make and it had to be made from the excretions of a snail butt that was in what is now Lebanon. That's not a lot of die. How many snail butts does? It take? About two fifty for an ounce, And so it was very, very very expensive. It was worth more than good. It was rare and the color that they were really going for was a color that looked like

clotted blood, which is not so attractive to me. So so what I did use in the end chips from a logwood tree, which is a Brazilian sustainable tree. But it is a little fugitive, so you don't want to be out this on a lot with it. But it was a beautiful color. I'd show it to you, except um, I actually sent the sweater to Vogue Knitting to photograph and they still have it that I hope they didn't lose it. Now they didn't lose you know, I'm sort of fascinated by the whole project and the ritual and

it dies and the spinning. All of it is fascinating to me. But it's an incredibly poignant book because you discussed so many other things. You do. You discuss aging, you talk about empty nesting, you talk about your parents. Uh, there's so many layers and context to it. It's clearly not just how to share a sheet. Yeah. What was else? Was weird about it? Was? It really fount me thinking about um? I mean, you know, environmental anxiety, climate anxiety

was part of this too. But like we are so conscious. I mean I'm sure you are. I know I am of like the organic produce and um yep, you know, making sure that you're driving your hybrid car and recycling and composting if you are in accomposting place, of doing all these things. But we never think about fashion. We don't think about our clothe never. And that was a whole thing. Yeah, what how are they are made? Who's

making them? No? Synthetic die? Yeah, all of it. It's fascinating when wrote that in your book, I thought, I never think about that. I never thought about it. I think about everything else. I do not think about the things that I you know, our armor put on your body. Yeah, but you think about what goes in it goes in your body, but not what goes on it. And that

was I mean, knowing about it. I went through a period when I was writing this where first of all, I just was like, I can't just buy a pair of pants, just not a pair of fan you know, but I I I kind of couldn't go into a store. I mean even once we could go into stores again, I just would see all those synthetic which is plastic, right, all the synthetics, so all these plastic clothes and think about where they were going to end up. And I was I became like kind of hysterical and uh, and

I would have to leave. I've gotten I mean not that I'm better and now I don't care anymore, but I've I've got a grip. Um. Well you can't you can't un know it. You know, you can't unno it. And and it really makes me think hard. And I do think really hard about what I bought. And it's interesting too, because like when we were young, you went shopping maybe like twice a year, when you know, would be like back to school, yeah, back to school and

was spread. But but fast fashion has so changed our our relationship and our perception of clothing and shopping that we don't even think about the fact that we're buying clothing constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly, um, and most of it's made of plastic and all that just I don't know. So now my daughter, probably your daughters too, they buy a lot of thrift. And I think that kids who girls, girls particularly boys, don't buy as much stuff girls who

are conscious in this way. And I think our daughters are much more conscious than we are. When I started talking to my daughter about all of this, she already knew about all of it. She was sending me websites like good on You and you know where I could check things, and she knew it all. And if we just never discussed it, um, and she buys a lot more thrift. Yeah. I I started doing that too when

I became conscious of it. And also the idea of the amount of money I would spend on something that was quote unquote cool or in where I could go in the real reel, you know, and get a cocktail dress. You know. But a friend of mine gave me a coat a couple of Christmas is ago that was all made out of recycled bottles, which I know sounds completely bizarre. It is the most comfortable coat I've ever owned, and so that was my first little window. What oh god,

Peggy's making a face, Hi, Ali. I learned how to cook Hungarian food during COVID. My mama taught me all my grandma's recipes, and I know them all by heart now, and I'm so grateful because the year later, my mom passed away, and if we hadn't had COVID, I wouldn't have these memories to carry with me. Here's and it's time for a short welcome back to go ask Galley during COVID. This isn't response to your COVID Instagram. I became a hiker. I had always loved a hike, and

I decided um that I would start climbing mountains. Um stead of sitting home and being sad and missing my husband who had passed away, I took myself outside and I dragged my fifty eight year old self up mountains and I never felt prouder or more empowered. What's the face? No, I shouldn't like that, So it's not. It's kind of brown, kind of like a kind of like a half dead lawn First of all, it's gonna end up somewhere. It's gonna end up in landfull eventually anyway, and there you are.

But also UM, it sheds micro fibers all that, all those UM recycled bottle things should these tecy tinsy invisible filaments all over the organic produce and when you wash them, UM tens of thousands of them go down your your clothes washer and they go right into the water supply. And they are the single biggest source of water pollution right now. So all right, I've stopped buying the platt

You've got that one. So but the plastic bottle stuff is one of those choices that's not as bad as buying something that's made of what they call virgin materials. But it's not great. It's just a bunch of plastic bottles, that's what you're telling me. Okay, it's a bunch of plastic and it's and it's degrading and it's and it's

getting into the wall I talk about in UM. How when I was a little kid, we used to um on Rosa Shanna on the Jewishary year, you're supposed to throw your sins into the lake, and we would go to the lake in Minneapolis as a group our synagogue and throw our sins in, and I would think of like, down at the bottom of that lake, there's like this huge tary mass of generations of sins gathering. Microfibers are a little bit like okay, all right, good, all right,

I've been educated. So no, no, no. So I love this quote your husband said to you, You're always trying to prove something unnecessary that no one cares about, to nobody in particular. And I love how you write about that. You are a bit of a perfectionist, right, You like to win. So this project that you started had to You had, first of all, had to finish it. There had to be closure, and you had to finish it well.

And a lot of people would would I mean, just out on the deck dying the wool, would have given up and been on j cru dot com. So you have some grit to you that really pushed you through to the finish line. Yeah. I mean I would say a couple of things about that. I mean, that's my things about the one is Yeah, especially with the sharing. At one point, I mean, Laura, my cheering teacher, said to me, you're doing you know you've done really great.

Of course, that's what I want to hear, really great him. Um, she said, most people are either crying or swearing by now, and I would have been except I kept thinking, I have to do this for work, and I can be a different person when I'm doing something for work than I can be if I'm not so knowing that I had to do this, because otherwise I was going to have to admit that I didn't. UM would push me through.

So there was that, But I think what the real beauty for me, One of the big takeaways, and one of the real beauty of doing this project for me was being an amateur. And I was never going to be good at it. I was never gonna win. I was never going to be perfect. And at first, if you read the book, I'm always going I'm terrible and terrible, terrible.

But by the time I got to the point where you're talking about, where my husband is saying, you're always trying to prove something you know to nobody in particular, I was starting to realize that UM, being able to be a beginner and finding joy in being a beginner is so rare at this time in our lives. Because we really want to be able to do what we

want to be able to do. And I've always had for years, I've had on my wall this um Linda Barry cartoon that's about creativity and about the idea of how we learned shame around creativity and how there's this moment where you're doing whatever you're doing, you're drawing your stuff, you know, like you're a little kid. You just draw right, and then somebody says that sucks, and suddenly you think, wait, what there's sucks and there's good uh, and then that's it.

It's over and um and you live your life, you know. I always think about An Lamott when she wrote Bird by Bird. I don't know if you've ever read that book. It's one of my favorite books about creativity. She talks about the radio station k fucked KFKD that plays in your head and on right and when you're trying to do something like right or do your you know, your creative work. That on one hand, it's telling you like you're the greatest you, you deserve to be on the

New York Times bestsell lists. On the other hand, it's taying, why did you think you could pick up a pencil, you completely untalented horror show, and you have to shut both those things up enough to do your work. And I've learned how to do that more or less as a writer, um, but to try to do something new was was hearing all that all over him and finally recognizing that it didn't matter if it was good, It didn't matter if it sucked. The question was what have

I learned here? How how might I do it differently next time? What joy am I taking? And finding that I can make blue, that I can share a sheet, that I can take this fluff and turn it into into usable yarn um, and just that that was the I think the most valuable lesson of all for me was learning how to be um little se creative and be a beginner and and just enjoy that now at this age, well you know, as simple as it is. One of my favorite quotes in life is the art

is in the doing. It's not the finished project, it's everything you learned along the way, so and you did it. That's the thing. That's the thing. I think a lot of things that stop us women, particularly of our age, is that we go I'm not going to start that now. Had I started in my twenties. Maybe, but I think we would be even more extraordinary and fulfilled if we actually allowed ourselves to be beginners with certain things. Yeah so, and just that that that idea too. I mean process

of a product, process of our product. If you can't learn that when you're pursuing something creative, you're never going to feel good about it, if you're all about the product. And I couldn't be about the product, and this because the product was going to be ugly, and and it's not. It actually isn't. I mean, when you see it, it's on the back of the book, so you'll be able to see what it looks like. There's a picture of it. If you when you see it just lying there on

the floor, you'll think, oh, that's not so bad. Um, And it's cool that the colors are cool. I ended up making stripes. It looks fine laying on the ground. And and it is also, by the way, I don't know why, it weighs three pounds, which is about three times with a sweater, which I'll have these sweater would normally weigh so it is impossible to work. But it is hideous on my body. It makes me look like the giant pumpkin. I don't know partly because of I made it. I got. I ran a monk of my

own body and its issues. Yeah. And when my UM person who is helping me learn how to design, kept saying, you need shaping, you should put shaping, and I kept saying, no, I don't want to. And so it stands out from my body you need I mean, you shouldn't try to pretend like you don't exist. Is basically the lesson of that, which was what I was doing. Well, yes, because by the way, again, women of our age are like, you

know what, I'll just wear a shmata. You know, we don't care exactly comfortable, but in fact there are vibr bodies underneath all this. So we don't need to wear Charlie Brown sweaters anymore. We can actually wear something that has some shape. It's okay, Yeah, I can't wait to see it. Yeah. So, Peggy, I've asked you everything I could possibly ask you about sharing a sheep, But now it is your turn to ask me a question and go ask Ali and you can ask me anything you want.

So what is the question you want to ask me today? Okay? So I just saw the movie Um, she said, yes, And I don't know if you saw it the idea, And I am wondering your theory on why you think that movie did not do well in the box office. My theory is that everybody knows the story, so there's no surprises. Like when I saw Spotlight, for example, I didn't know the magnitude of abuse in Boston. You know.

With this particular story, I feel like we've all read about it, We've all we know all the facts about it, so there wasn't a kind of surprise about it. I also think that a documentary would be a little stronger than a scripted movie about it, you know what I mean. Like when they had the fake Harvey Weinstein, you know, I just want, oh, that's some guy who kind of looked they're shooting him from behind. Like there were things that pulled me out of the story a little bit. Um,

that's why I think it didn't. Why do you well, I think I thought that an actor that looked like however you want said, I thought, oh for him, Um, he didn't even get a line. Um. No, I thought it was because I actually liked the movie a lot. But I thought it was because men don't want to see it. So you got that. And then women I didn't want to be triggered by it, so they didn't want to see it either. That's interesting. Yeah, and so

I think it was an audience problem though. I went with a bunch of girlfriends and I found that we we kind of cried all the way through it, not because of the story itself, but because whatever it was bringing up. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So it was actually I appreciated that. But that's my theory. Good. I like your theory. I just think everybody is a theory about it. Oh, I think you're I think your theory

is right. Actually, now that I think about it, I was I was looking at it just from a producers standpoint, you know what I mean. When I was watching it, I was like, well, we know all this, you know, I know how it ends. I know this. I know that I don't like. Again, when I said about the documentary, I don't like being pulled out of the story and the back of Harvey Weinstein and then the fake assistant Gwyneth Paltrow. There were things about it that I'm like, Oh,

you don't need to do that. You need to do that. I know that's anyway, thank you for the question, pleasure, thanks for answering. Okay, Peggy Orenstein, I love this book so much, I really do. I love it because it took me into a craft I had knew nothing about, so I got a historical education. It was certainly a personal journey that I think everybody will be able to connect to in one way or another. And it's beautifully written.

It's really it's it's a it is a great book, and thank you for letting me read it, and thank you for letting me talk to you about it. And I know it's going to be a huge success. And if you ever share a sheep again, I would be very interested in coming along. I was gonna say you can join me. I'm actually very interested. I think I could. I think I could put together a group of post menopausal women that would love to share a sheep. So

thank you, thank you, super fun. I am fifty seven years old and living with metastatic stage for cancer for twelve years now. I guess you know. It was my new thing to be able to write the book and recrease my tenure at that time, battle with cancer during the pandemic at a teacher and being married to a coach. My husband and I were out of school for a while, so we would drop around. And here's red truck hashtag red Truck chronicles and eight pictures of the beautiful things

we spotted in Niger. When I turned sixty, I decided every year I would take up a new hobby, or learn a new skill, or try something that I had been afraid to do. So one year I learned how to play poker, one year I took up pilates, I starting to play golf, and this year I am going to try force back riding. So I think it's great that you want to encourage people to try new skills, but I'm not ready for claiming thanks. I can't imagine what my sweater would look like if I even tried

to shear die and make a sweater. Oh my god, I don't even think my husband could fake liking it. Thank you for listening to go ask Gali. Peggy's new book, Unraveling What I Learned about Life while sharing Sheep, Dying Wool, and Making the World Ugliest Sweater is out now and you can find her on Instagram at p j Orenstein. And for more info on what you've heard in this episode. Check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate

and review. Go ask Alli and follow me on social media on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and listen if you'd like to ask me a question or suggested guest or a topic to dig into. I would love to hear from you, and there is a bunch of ways you can do it. You can call or text me at three to three four six five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. And if you leave a question, you just might hear it.

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