There are a lot of sheep in Wales. I often hear people wondering what on earth happens to all of the wool - and how they can buy it. These days it is mostly bought by large companies for making building insulation or goes to national sorting depots where it gets graded by quality and sold at global auction (by the tonne). The huge scale of the operation means that small mills have not been able to compete on price, and so we have inevitably lost almost all of the wool processing services in Wales. But of course, when you gain in economy, you usually loose in provenance.
Here in Carmarthenshire, in fact, within an hours drive of Carpenter and Cloth base camp, we are incredibly lucky to still have a commercial woollen mill. Our mill is not only operating at a manageable scale for independent makers, but can sort and scour (clean) fleeces, card (comb) then and spin the yarn as well as weave the cloth. To offer all of these services in one place is no small feat and requires a huge wealth of knowledge, skills and equipment.
So, when shearing time was nigh, I approached two of my farming neighbours to see if I could buy their wool straight off the farm. I was able to pick and roll my fleeces right from under the shearers feet, and got enough Black Welsh Mountain and Ryeland wool to commission 67m of beautiful herringbone cloth!
From delivering my 30 fleeces to the mill it took 9 months to receive back my 2 rolls of cloth, but it is absolutely perfect for our Cambrian Gilet! It is dense and hard wearing, but with good movement and on top of all of that, it is the cloth produced by the land in which we live.
As clothing and textiles have become such massive scale industries, most of us have lost any idea of how our clothing might connect us with a sense of place or belonging in a geographical and environmental sense… but I think that is a blog post for another day!
In terms of national wool production, my little operation is a drop in hills, but I hope it demonstrates what can be done if we just stick to what we believe in. Buy less, buy better ….and all that.