The reason why so many of us love a pub quiz is that knowledge is the key to survival. For early man knowing which plants were toxic and where the buffalo roamed was vital. As humans settled down to an agrarian lifestyle we started to tame rather than chase. We bred and cross bred all sorts of animals and our knowledge increased daily. 

The fact that the tamed Asiatic Mouflon is the ancestor to all our sheep and that more breeds of sheep live in Great Britain than any anywhere else may not make much difference to your life nowadays, but you never know, the knowledge could one day win you a pub quiz.

I’m writing all about wool at the moment as wool month comes to a close. You are going to have to indulge me as I take you on a fascinating journey of just how amazing wool really is. There is something about wool that seems to inspire great passion. I could have chatted for days when we went to visit Haldi Kranich-Wood at Wool House in Bradford, one of the largest centres of wool grading in the county.

As you know wool was our greatest asset in the middle ages but it’s still a good export. I learned that British wool from mountain sheep with a bulky thick fibre is unbeatable for carpets. Nothing else, synthetic or natural, springs back as well as ours and for the toughest floor coverings in places such as casinos and cruise ships, everyone wants our wool.

The British Wool Marketing Board was founded sixty years ago to ensure that our farmers receive the best possible price for their wool. Anyone in the country with more than six sheep is obliged to sell their wool through the board where auctions take place bimonthly in the season. All of our 35 thousand sheep farmers send 34 million kilos of wool to be sold every year and it is all sorted by hand.

Head grader Ian Brooksbank explained how the six types of wool; fine, medium, cross, lustre, hill and mountain are graded depending on their colour and quality and then bundled into eight ton lots for auction. The really interesting thing is that all the wool is just a byproduct of the meat industry. Farmers are obliged by law to shear sheep for their comfort in the summer months, but no one actually breads sheep just for their wool anymore. Compared to the past wool prices are pitiful.

The poor price of wool came as a great shock to our king a few years ago. Determined to remedy this and spread awareness King Charles started the Campaign for Wool in 2010.  The campaign has been doing a fabulous job explaining why we all need more wool in our lives. Wool actually gives out heat when it gets wet, an exothermic reaction unlike any other cloth, and I love the fact that it absorbs smell and hardly needs washing. Wool keeps you warm and dry but it also blocks harmful UV light and absorbs far more moisture than cotton which is vital for sporting activities.

Wool just has so many wonderful attributes and I’m always happy to tell you more when you drop by my shop. I’ve also taken up spinning, in a Gandhi rather than Hoy way, it’s a very addictive hobby so come along and we can spin yarns together and plan a sustainable woolly future.

SAVE THE DATE:

As Christmas approaches we plan to host a late night shopping event in store on the 23rd November opening until 8pm, along with all our neighbours in the area. It will be a great evening in Marylebone, so do pop it in your diary and we hope to see you then. We will be offering 10% off all our collections and made to measure, so it is a great time to plan ahead for your gift shopping, and we offer gift vouchers in store too.