To give you a little background.
I am in the craft yarn world. I knit kilt hose, other socks, and other various items like toques and comfort dolls on my Hand-Cranked Circular Sock Machine. I teach and demonstrate.
I am the inventor and maker of The Wizards Winder.
My Wife is a spinner, dyer, knitter and weaver. She starts with raw fleece, cleans, retts, fulls, combs, spins, and knits or weaves with the yarn. There are 4 spinning wheels and 4 looms in my home.
My wife is the president of our local Hand Knitters and Spinners Guild.
She is active in the world-wide "Shave 'em to Save 'em" movement.
She is active in the HRH sponsored "Campaign for Wool" with its Canadian branch "Canadian Wool Council".
And the "CanadianWool.org"
We are both on Ravelry.
We have seen local spinning mills go under in just the last few years. One went under with 3 years worth of small farmers' fleeces still sitting, waiting for processing.
This is just one of those mills.
The problem is not the craft spinners, dyers, knitters, and weavers. It is at the processing level of the chain. It is just not profitable, or even sustainable, to process wool at the less than industrial level anywhere in the world today.
Herds of sheep raised for their wool are being culled on a daily basis simply because there is nowhere to sell fleeces, or find a mill to process the fleeces. Even a small herd of 25-50 sheep must be sheared twice a year and can produce over 1000 lbs of raw fleece a year. If you can't sell those fleeces or find somewhere to process them, you must get rid of the sheep because you can't even afford to pay the shearer. (of which there are fewer and fewer. It is a skilled trade that no one wants to get into anymore.) If you do not shear the sheep, they die.
Originally Posted by Steve Ashton
To give you a little background.
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