Unfortunately to the detriment of a territory and a people: Mongolia.
Being an adept of beautiful natural wool and knitwear , this subject particularly affects me. People often ask me: why don't you offer cashmere in a ball?
Here are some arguments to explain you, evoked in particular by my dear spinning Fonty:
1/ Cashmere goat produces very little wool: 100 to 150g. The mohair goat is rather around 3.5kg. You need some cashmere goats to make a sweater! Basically, we multiply the necessary grass area by 20.
2/ Goats pull the grass to the root, unlike sheep.
Cashmere production is naturally in fragile areas: Gobi and Altai steppes in Mongolia. By increasing demand, the development of livestock farming is leading to desertification that is close to an ecological catastrophe:
The Gobi Desert progresses about 500 meters per year.
3/ The extra-fine Merino wool is of a casi softness comparable to cashmere! But here it is, it has less good reputation, is cheaper and resellers make less margins...
Yet this merino wool is now found in each of the balls
100% natural wool from our French spinning mills
. The treatments currently allow a washing machine operation at 30°, what more could you ask for? Note that the hottest wools are yak, alpaca, mohair and merino instead of cashmere.
If you are interested in the subject of cashmere, this video will teach you more:
Cashmere, alpaca, mohair...What differences?
This subject affects me even more because Mongolia does not even benefit from its cashmere wool, considered the most beautiful in the world! Indeed, Mongolia does not have the industrialization capable of transforming cashmere into yarn on a large scale nor to knit them... Everything is sent to its neighbouring country (1st cashmere producer in the world): China.
So it's decided, not only I still don't sell a ball of cashmere wool but also, my next sweater will be merino wool!
What do you think of that?
