On return from the International Wool Manufacturers Conference in Sydney late Thursday, I had thought that our much needed rain would put a dampener on this year’s show. Saturday and Sunday were, however, beautiful Autumn days and if cars are any way of judging, attendance was high.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I always marvel at the many exhibits – the biggest vegetables, the best paintings, the most beautiful flower arrangements, the finest needlework, the best, most intricate knitwear. Shows bring out the “est” of life!
One such person with a real zest for life, a passionate knitter, was a Norwegian delegate to the Wool Conference. She enthused about the Spaelsau sheep, native of Norway, extolling the natural colours, black, white, many shades of grey and a russet brown potentially from the one fleece.
The sheep, she explained, produce two types of wool, a softer finer coat close to the skin and an outer layer of straight very coarse, lustrous fibre able to handle the fierce cold conditions of its environment. I suspect it was her influence which made me look more closely and appreciatively at the coloured wools displayed in the rotunda between the handcrafts and the vegetables.
And watching Gardening Australia on the ABC at lunchtime today, it seemed that everyone was jumping out of their skins, extolling the virtues of gardening, the ease of saving seeds, the prodigious bounty of a great vegetable garden, the pleasure of a softly scented flowering bush, the joy of a good compost, the ingenuity of recycling a disused fibreglass swimming pool to create a rich aquatic environment. It seems there has never been a more exciting time to be an Aussie gardener!
Well, you can easily imagine how intrigued I was about the topic of ethical recycling of woollen product at the Wool Conference. Like so many others, I had grown up with Great Depression educated parents who recycled old jumpers by undoing the knit and reknitting it. Hardly rocket science!
Yet waste wool at the manufacturing level can be an expensive overhead. According to Barry Walker, a Japanese woollen suit manufacturer pondered the potential uses of the offcuts from each suit and hit on the idea to recycle the waste wool fabric into nursery pots. Wool, a natural protein, makes strong, lightweight, biodegradable, fertilizing pots which unlike plastic can remain around the plant when it is put into the ground. With one idea the manufacturer has increased his profit margin and helped the environment. A real win win situation!
And the Indoor Swimming Pool meeting called by Director of Engineering, Garry Chapman and coordinated by former Councillor Ross Webster also has the hallmarks of a winner! With the help of an industry expert, the committee formed at the meeting will consider and report to Council on the viability of an indoor heated swimming pool for Yass. Council has set aside money for the report from its Section 94 fund, a fund contributed to by developers.
If the report is favourable then plans will be drawn up and we can all work towards affording it. It’s worth remembering that the current 50m pool was paid for over a period of years from such fund raisers as the annual Woollen Week festival.
