I am in Johannesburg on a teaching trip, the first since the pandemic struck in early 2020. I am absolutely knackered, although I am enjoying teaching face-to-face again. I have been busy each day since before dawn until I crash into bed at night and despite so carefully planning and packing my knitting for this trip, I haven’t managed a single row. (Not even on the 13 hour flight! And yes, I know it’s an 11 hour flight, but we spent an hour on the tarmac each side, so I am calling it as I see it.)

In any case, I wanted to stop by and say hello, and I saw a very intriguing article today which I thought you might be interested in, so here I am for a drive-by post. The article is called “Shear desperation: low price of wool pushes farmers to opt for moulting sheep”. Here is an interesting quote, from farmer James Edwards:

“Wool is a man-made thing,” says Edwards. “Naturally, sheep don’t have big woolly fleeces, because there wouldn’t be anybody there to shear them. All forms of early, primitive or wild sheep either shed their wool or it falls out.

“We bred them to have massive fleeces because of the wool trade; that was great, because wool was a fibre that was incredibly popular. Fast forward to now, it’s simply not worth anything.”

From: Shear desperation: low price of wool pushes farmers to opt for moulting sheep | Farming | The Guardian

Not worth anything? How disturbing!

Let me know what you think. I will fly home on the weekend and hopefully life will settle down enough for me to pick up my knitting again.

Best from sunny Jo’burg!