The Wool Wire | August 7, 2024

News snippets from the wool world

Hello, my friends!

We kick off this week with some exciting entertainment news. Channel 4, a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel, has commissioned eight episodes of "The Game of Wool," a knitting competition show that will take place in the Scottish countryside.

Before we get too excited, I should note that in the UK the word "wool" is used interchangeably with the word "yarn," so this show won't be exclusively about sheep's wool. However, at a time when the Great British Bake Off and the Great British Sewing Bee have captured the world's attention, a knitting-focused competition show is long overdue.

The Game of Wool will be hosted by judges Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell. In terms of guest judges, you won't see many figures from the mainstream knitting community except Olympic diver Tom Daley. But Lorde, Ryan Gosling, and Nicholas Hoult, who know their way around knitting needles, have been tapped to step in and give the show some celeb sparkle.

Women Setting Woolly World Records

While all eyes have been on the Olympic athletes setting records in Paris this week, earlier this summer Australian shearer Jeanine Kimm set a world record of her own, shearing 358 Merino ewes in eight hours.

The 31-year-old is not only the first woman to set an official Merino shearing record, she’s the first Australian woman to achieve a record on any breed.

Woolpower for the Win!

You've heard of horsepower. Now there's a new kind of wool power that may soon enter the automotive arena. Researchers in Australia say they have found a way to heat and compress hair and wool and turn it into graphite, which just happens to be a critical ingredient in lithium batteries.

That's right. Your next electric car could have wool in the seats and wool in the battery.

This innovation also paves the way for Australia and other wool-producing countries to become key producers of lithium batteries for storing renewable energy.

Note that they're not talking about using prime cuts of top-grade wool. This is an ideal use of waste wool and grades of wool that have very little commercial value—giving more shepherds a shot at economically viable flocks.

From Stodgy to Status Symbol: Successfully Rebranding Wool

Regenerative garments are being rebranded as "the ultimate status symbol," and I'm here for it. This article from The Guardian hits on all the major points, not the least of which is the impact of climate change and our urgent need to act now.

"In a rapidly heating world, what projects status more than wearing fine merino wool grown on a sheep farm that has so many native trees and grasses it sequesters more carbon than it emits?"

The question remains whether this trend can translate from high-end to mainstream shoppers who can't afford a $600 Loro Piana cashmere baseball cap. But it absolutely promotes a way of farming that will benefit us all as joint shareholders of planet Earth.

From Fish to Fashion

And finally, fancy a history lesson? Then you'll have fun reading Andrea Bossi's look at the history of the Irish fisherman's sweater.

Ireland has made a sizable impact on fashion, from contemporary designers like Simone Rocha to historic ones like Sybil Connolly. The Aran jumper is one of its proudest exports, though, claiming an important spot in knitwear's lineage. Its story begins in the late 1800s and extends into modern-day, reimagined by the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier and JW Anderson, embraced by celebrities ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Taylor Swift. It's a staple to many, but it also represents larger resource and manufacturing trends felt in Ireland and beyond.

While I already had a baseline familiarity with these sweaters from a knitting and wool perspective, I appreciated learning more about how this traditional sweater moved in and out of the world of high fashion.

And on that note, I'll let you go.

Thanks as always for your readership and your support.

Until next time,

Clara