WOOL: A 12-part series
A yearlong commitment to reporting on wool, from the farm to the factory and finally, to your closet
My first encounter with sheep wasn’t cute or pastoral, but it’s one of those stories from childhood that has become part of my personal mythology.
On a school field trip in kindergarten, my class visited a farm with a petting zoo. My mom was one of the parent chaperones. “The person who ran it let you guys inside the coral,” she remembers. “I don’t know if it was a head butt, but they came alongside with their front shoulder and pushed you. They were a lot stronger than you realized.” And so, I fell on my bum and probably cried in front of my whole class. A boy named Austin teased me for it through high school.
While I’m absolutely certain that the petting zoo scuffle did not contribute immediately to my adoration of sheep, it most definitely gave me a lasting respect and reverence for the wooly animal.
For the past several years, I have reported on wool, sheep, and the people who tend to both. I didn’t wake up one day and choose to write about sheep; rather, the topic just sort of landed in my lap when I was invited to Denmark in 2023 to cover the 30th anniversary of the family-owned slipper company Glerups. That profile led to two more pieces about sheep for the Finnish knitting magazine LAINE. One of those pieces led me to a friendship with a traveling sheep shearer. And now my friend, Matt, and I are working on a film about that sheep shearer.
In all this time around sheep, including in open fields of grazing ewes and lambs, I have not been pushed down again (I am also a fully grown adult as opposed to a 40-pound child), and my fondness and fascination with them only grows.
This winter, I have been studying wool and sheep more closely in an academic sense. I’ve bought several books and checked out texts from the library with “wool” and “sheep” in the titles. Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater by Peggy Orenstein. Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool by Clara Parkes. The Lost Flock by Jane Cooper. Even Woolgathering by Patti Smith. My research so far has taken me from an embroidery school in the Scottish Highlands (virtually) to the Columbia Wool Scouring Mill right down the street from me in North Portland.
Maybe most miraculous and newsworthy, I’ve learned that, after decades of decline due to the rise of synthetic fibers, demand for wool is making a strong comeback. Woolmark, the global authority on wool, predicts that the market value for wool will nearly double from $34.9 billion in 2022 to $63.2 billion by 2033. Even without the numbers and industry assurance, I have my own evidence that wool is experiencing a revolution. One of my friends shared his dream of opening a sheep farm in Spain, where he was born and raised. Other close friends are deeply immersed in the world of wool through their recent obsession with knitting. On a recent shopping excursion, another friend peeked at the tags of sweaters, preferring garments made of wool and cotton to acrylic and polyester.
As for you, I bet you have at least one wool garment in your closet, if not many more. Maybe it’s a scratchy wool sweater knit by grandma. Maybe it’s a wool base layer that only gets pulled out for skiing and snowy activities. Or maybe it’s a pair of wool undies or socks that you wear and wash every week. Wool is all around us, and it’s one of the oldest natural textiles dating back to the Stone Age.
With my reporter cap on—let’s say it’s a wool beanie—I’m going to be spending the next year writing to you about every aspect of wool: the symbolism of the sacrificial lamb, the textile’s journey from the back of the sheep to the spinnery, and in the home stretch of the series, it’s vast adoption and application in apparel.
Once a month in 2026, you, my dear reader, will receive a newsletter in a variety of shapes. Historical account, reported story, travelogue, essay, interview—and a mix of all forms. My goal is to entertain and educate both you and myself.
I plan to keep every post accessible in front of the paywall, but I also want to offer something meaningful for paid subscribers. A sheep print sent via snail mail? My curation of stylish wool garments? A recorded interview? If you have suggestions on what would be most valuable, please leave a comment or reach out directly.
Whether you arrived here as a fiber artist, gear head, or casual reader, I guarantee you’re going to learn something from this yearlong examination of wool.
Thanks for following along.
I remember when I started knitting someone told me I would become obsessed with sheep eventually and I didn’t believe them at the time, but I was very wrong! So excited to read this series throughout the upcoming year. And I think the snail mail sheep print sounds fun!
The English send us their finest wool and call it trade. We return it as broadcloth worth ten times the price and call it commerce. They have been trying to understand the difference for two hundred years.
The wool is excellent, though.
— M