Wednesday Journal Reflection

So for about two and a half days I have been either on my couch or in my bed trying to 'rest'. On either occasion, I had an afghan in which I was wrapped up in. These afghans are crocheted by y mum for different occasions (Christmas, a birthday, etc). The one I had been wrapped up in the last two days was one made for Christmas. Today though I was using my favorite afghan. This afghan has stripes the color of various blues, browns, and off whites. It is made of all sorts of different blends of yarn. I bring this up because the reason this afghan is my favorite is because of its texture. My mum washed the afghan after she finished, which is pretty customary, but she accidentally put it in the dryer. Which would normally be OK, but not when some of the yarn she used is made of 100% lambswool. When you run wool of any sort through the dryer, it has a tendency to 'fuzzy up'. Meaning that instead of being completely wound yarn it has become undone slightly. In this case 'fuzzing up' worked out pretty well. But noticing this got me thinking about where we had ever gotten the wool yarn to begin with. Considering that wool is something that most of the year is not used or needed in San Diego. I then remembered that we had bought the skeins of yarn on a family trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. I also looked at on of my scarves that I had worn the week prior and found out that it was also made of 100% wool.

So I know this yarn is made in Scotland because the scarf had said made in Scotland. And in thinking that, probably more Northern Scotland because that is where most of the farming resides. But are these farms commercially run or family run? Are the lambs this wool is collected from strictly used for their fur harvesting or are they used for their meat as well? If theses farms are family run how much does that fact impact the price once the yarn has gone through processing? Is the processing done on sight? Done by hand or machine? Another aspect that jumped into my mind was if these farms are commercially run does this impact the environment more so than those that are family run? Or is the affect the opposite?