Pegg Thomas started knitting at age 9 in her local 4-H club. She has been spinning her own yarns since the tender age of 16 after she purchased a pair of English Angora rabbits to show in 4-H. From there she switched to French Angora rabbits and then to Border Leicester sheep.
Drafting and Design captured Pegg’s interest in high school and she went on to study at Lake Superior State University. However, her love with design went into a direction she never imagined. She started charting her own counted cross stitch patterns. Published in numerous counted cross magazines throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when cross stitch started to slump in popularity, Pegg took her design skills and her love of knitting and started creating her own knitting patterns.
But her love of fibers combined with her love of history brought her focus back to spinning and in 2020 she started collecting and refurbishing antique spinning wheels. She currently has five antique wheels – all functional – from a Revolutionary War era Great Wheel (in the photos with the shawls below) to a small early 1900’s Hutterite parlor wheel.
Pegg sold her flock of registered Border Leicester sheep in the fall of 2021. Today, she creates her signature wool shawls from fibers left from her flock and raw fleeces she purchases from other shepherds. With the release of each new book, one of her newsletter subscribers is chosen to win the shawl that is themed to go with that book.
Pegg Thomas 