by Clara Parkes
“Are you naturally good at math?” I asked.
“I’m pretty much good at everything I’ve tried,” he said. “But you’ve got to care.”
I remembered David at S&D referring to one of his clients having “a lotta moxie,” and I thought the expression fit this David rather perfectly, too.
Meanwhile, he was busy telling me how the yarn to be scoured would spend ten minutes in the tank with a detergent he described as “eco-friendly.” There’s no agitation, just the movement of water as it’s gently pushed in one direction, then the other.
When the ten minutes were up, the yarn tank would be lifted out of the water, placed on a metal cart, and moved to an extractor that spins at 2,200 RPMs.
“You’ve gotta make sure it’s really balanced,” he said, sliding armloads of wet skeins off the poles and dropping them into what appeared to be a very old industrial laundry machine. “If you don’t, the whole thing’ll just take off.”
He tucked a piece of cloth over the top opening, closed the lid, and pushed a big button. As soon as it started spinning, David pointed to an opening in the PVC pipe leading away from the machine. I could see water gurgling through it.
Drier but certainly not dry, the scoured skeins were pulled out of the extractor, dropped into a big bin, and wheeled over to the main area of the dyehouse, where each skein was slipped onto a worn wooden pole and hung on big metal racks to dry.
Scouring was quick, but dyeing would require more time.
We were now standing at the big four-hundred-pound tank which, this being Halloween, took on the sinister look of a giant steel coffin. I didn’t see what caused it, but suddenly a thick foam appeared on the surface. I caught someone pouring a white powder into the tanks and was told it was an organic defoamer.
Sure enough, the water soon ran clear again. Next came acetic acid, a much more concentrated version of the vinegar hand-dyers use to assist with dye uptake. (Acetic acid is 56 percent acidity to vinegar’s 0.5 percent, meaning they don’t have to use nearly as much to get the job done.)
The dye tank runs in two cycles: The water is pushed from one side to the other along the top, and after four minutes it stops and reverses direction, but this time with the water flowing along the bottom of the tank. The goal is to keep dye in constant circulation to prevent spotting or pooling.
Wet yarn can be quite heavy, so the yarn tanks are mechanically lifted using a giant, rather ominous-looking hook that leads up to metal tracks running along the ceiling.
Standing nearby and holding a cartoonishly large yellow control box also connected by a wire to a motor on the ceiling, Malik moved the yarn-filled box over to the dye-filled tank and slowly lowered it until it was fully submerged.
It’s surprising that Stephen King hasn’t written a story about this yet, with some unfortunate victim trapped inside that box as it slowly descends into the hot water of doom. I couldn’t help it—there was a spooky vibe in the dyehouse that day. Anyone who’s grown up in Biddeford will tell you that the mill complex, all four million square feet of it, is haunted. In fact, the town’s annual Halloween mill tour sells out months in advance. Apparently it’s terrifying. They take you deep into the passages that run beneath the buildings—ones that had at one time been flooded with river water leading to the massive turbines. They let your imagination do the rest.
David grew up around here. I asked him if he thought the place was haunted. He smiled and said, “I’m not dumb enough to say it ain’t.”
Malik had tied several short strands of my yarn to the handle of a little door on top of the tank. This allowed him to cut off one strand every once in a while, pull its dyed tail out of the tank, rinse it and dry it, and check its progress against our original color.
At first the yarn was too pink. More blue was weighed, dissolved in hot water, and added to the mix. Already I could see that the electric fuchsia was way too intense for Eugene’s gentle fibers, but it was too late. He would definitely stand back, tilt his head, and declare it garish.
The box was raised out of the dye tank so that Malik could open the door, shove a metal pole inside, and push the skeins apart while shining a light on the yarn to check for saturation. He did this a few times before I declared it “perfect,” only out of fear that any further tinkering would make the finished results glow in the dark.
It was nearing 5 p.m. We’d finished the dyeing, and David, Malik, and Raana had left for the day. A skeleton crew remained to help load the extractor with my wet, now definitely garish yarn. Outside, the light was already dimming. I imagined that trick-or-treaters were beginning to assemble. We put one more batch of yarn through the extractor, rolled it into the other room, and hung each skein on the poles. The dyehouse was now eerily quiet.
They’d turned off all the lights in the room with the steel dye tank of doom, giving it an even more forbidding air of a crypt. Now the only sound was that of a small fan blowing air around the drying racks.
I turned to one of the men who’d pitched in to help with this last bit, a true Biddefordian whose family had worked at the mill for generations. I asked him if he thought the place was haunted.
“Have you seen those tunnels that run underneath here?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“They go for miles and miles.”
He narrowed his eyes and, in his best ghost-story voice, said, “Go down there and you’ll feel it. You know bad stuff has gone on down there. You know people have died.”
Then he shrugged, smiled, and wished me good night.
Just like that, my bale was done. I still had to twist and label every skein (I’d been writing all my bale yarn labels by hand; it felt only fitting) and send them to subscribers. And I still needed to share this final step in the journey with them before bringing our schooling to a close. But I’d reached the end of my bale.
There was no graduation ceremony that December, just a few final words of closure and thanks to these patient and trusting people who had made the journey with me. A virtual commencement speech of sorts. I struggled to leave them on an upbeat note, but I kept coming back to the words “if only.”
“If only Bollman’s still operated its scouring facility in Pennsylvania,” I wrote to them. “If only someone still made parts for the old carding machines, spinning frames, twisters, and skeiners domestic producers rely on to make yarn. If only companies like L.L.Bean hadn’t moved all their garment production overseas. If only we still had a thriving textiles industry in this country. If only the Great White Bale could go on forever.”
But of course it couldn’t. I was done.
Into each final yarn package, I tucked a small blue and gold enamel pin I’d had made just for us. It was shaped like the kind of rosette ribbon you’d win at the state fair—only here, it had the figure of a sheep standing on a bale. Under it were the words “Goodwool Ambassador.”
There may be no such thing as a Master’s of Yarn-Making degree, at least not yet. But we can still use this newly acquired knowledge to make a difference. All we have to do is wear wool and talk about wool and help people understand just how much goes into it—and why it deserves our support.
The world is waiting. Now it’s your turn. Go forth, my friend. Be a goodwool ambassador.
CHAPTER 13
CASTING OFF
What does one do with a newly minted Master’s of Yarn-Making degree? What kind of career path opens wide to you after adding an MYM to your résumé? That became the next question. Armed with this new knowledge, would I return to reviewing yarn but with greater flourish and wisdom? Or would I set out on a new adventure?
I’d jumped in headfirst and heart open, trusting in the process to take me where I’d need to be for whatever was next. The problem was, I got to the end of my bale, I’d spun my four chosen yarns, sent them off to the Explorers, and marked the project complete, but “next” wasn’t at all clear. Everyone was asking what my next project would be and if they could sign up right then. They were
lovely, trusting, eager people. But in fact, “next” was blurrier than ever, and I had another two thousand pounds of wool that needed to become yarn.
It took me several years to work through the rest of what I’d greedily amassed like a newly flush wool oligarch. Only then was I able to step backward and view this journey in its entirety.
I had named this project the Great White Bale without ever actually having read Moby-Dick—a move that turned out to be perhaps more prophetic than I could have imagined. I’d figured I was Ahab, that kooky ship captain who was obsessed with a great white whale. Sounded right to me.
But in actual fact (I still haven’t read the book, but at least now I know more of the plot), Ahab’s quest was fueled entirely by vengeance. He’d already faced the whale once and done battle with it, and the whale had bitten off his leg at the knee. Now, Ahab was out for revenge.
There was no vengeance here. I had no vendetta against the bale, only curiosity. I felt an eagerness to get inside something that had been elusive—the inner workings of the American textiles industry, as seen through the tiny window of yarn.
The identity of the whale changed through the course of the journey. At first it was the bale itself, this mythical behemoth that had overturned my complacent life. But there was very little chasing to be done, and soon enough I had the bale under my control. I’d broken its bands and disemboweled it.
Then, this wee bale of wool, sourced from a New York farm that would make the Montana ranches scoff, became my personal whaling ship. I sailed that wool from place to place. At each stop, I met people who, like the crews the Pequod encountered on its crazed captain’s quest, shared stories of their encounter with an even fiercer whale: change. Globalization. While some hoped for vengeance, the majority were simply glad to still be alive.
Chasing this whale would have been futile. There is no vengeance against change. You can harpoon it until you run out of harpoons, and you’ll never bring it down. But you can grieve the wake it has left behind and figure out how best to thrive in these new waters.
By the end of my journey it had all become so familiar—the smell of the lanolin and the spinning oil, the maker’s marks on the machines, the stray tufts of fiber on every surface, the greased gears and spare parts tucked here and there, the endless buckets of empty bobbins, the sights and sounds of the cards and the spinning frames and even the occasional “thwoooop” and hiss of the air splicer. I’d become fond of it, and the people behind it.
Those who make this world go—at Chargeurs, Bollman, ASI, S&D, Kraemer, Bartlett, Blackberry Ridge, the Saco River Dyehouse, and elsewhere—are the face of a story that’s unfolding across the country, a story that’s been unfolding for decades, one that will continue to unfold until we can find a way to slow the tide. By perseverance, flexibility, and a fair share of small mercies, this infrastructure remains intact, at least for now. It has kept people gainfully employed when work of this kind is harder and harder to find. It has enabled smaller companies—including those supplying yarn to knitters—to produce consistently good wool products in this country without going broke. And the passionate consumerism of knitters has allowed Jennifer, Kristine, Adrienne, and those like them to make a living from applying color to yarn. Together, it has kept open the possibility for people to clothe themselves with materials sourced from our own soil.
It’s been fun to learn how yarn is made, to do something different, to ease my professional ennui. But all that feels quite superficial in the face of these people’s lives and livelihoods, which are on the line. I felt remiss that I hadn’t taken the human consequences of this project more seriously.
If we want to be able to make wool socks or sweaters or suits or, yes, yarns, domestically and at prices that are even remotely affordable to the average consumer (and if we want jobs that will allow the average consumer to afford these goods), we need this infrastructure to remain healthy. Whether it’s shepherding or shearing or scouring or spinning or dyeing, I keep coming back to the fact that each of these links in our chain is in peril. These are not a museum to the past. Each deserves strengthening.
The glory days of American manufacturing may be behind us. We simply don’t live in that world anymore. The United States produces less than 1 percent of the world’s wool, and wool itself represents barely over 1 percent of the world’s textile fibers.
But that doesn’t mean we should give up. Ours will be a new textiles world. Like the one David Schmidt carved from his family legacy, it will be smaller, smarter, safer, more regionalized and efficient, and gentler on the environment. I have every faith in this new world. We just need to keep moving toward it.
The motion was there even during the year that I chased my bale around. A couple in Asheville, North Carolina, successfully raised funds to start an entirely U.S.-based business manufacturing custom-fit cotton and wool sweaters. Jake Bronstein’s Kickstarter campaign to start a domestically produced shoelace business raised more than $100,000 over its $25,000 goal—and since then he has raised another $1 million for an American-made hoodie allegedly so well made it comes with a ten-year warranty and free mending. NPR’s Planet Money produced an amazing piece on the production of a common T-shirt. The Saco River Dyehouse surpassed its initial fundraising goals by more than $16,000, and Mendocino Wool and Fiber exceeded its own fundraising goal to start a fiber mill in Northern California.
It continues. Detroit now has a watch factory. You can buy U.S.-made jeans whose fabric, hardware, and leather have all been sourced in this country. Ditto socks. Outdoor clothing retailer Duckworth goes so far as to source all its wool from a single Montana ranch.
The American Woolen Company, which at one time produced 20 percent of all woolen fabric in this country, has been reborn and is manufacturing fine woolen fabric and men’s clothing out of the old Warren of Stafford Textile Mill in Connecticut. The company received venture capital from investors who saw not only nostalgia but growth potential in this industry.
Just outside of Sacramento, Ryan Huston and his wife, Kat, have launched a new mill, Huston Textile Co., dedicated to providing small-batch American-made fabrics from U.S.-sourced materials, working with restored textile equipment also made in America.
Along with a growing number of farmers, sheep ranchers are embracing farming practices that sequester so much additional carbon dioxide (both in plants and in sheep’s wool) that they can operate with a carbon-neutral footprint and an impressive degree of environmental sustainability.
A growing network of “fibershed” programs that began in California has spread across the country, helping link regional farmers, wool producers, manufacturers, and consumers.
Advances are being made even in the realm of machine-washable wool, as we become increasingly aware of the harm microplastics are doing to the environment. The synthetic polymer used in the chlorine-polymer shrink-resist system is slowly being replaced with biodegradable ecopolymers, and the chlorine with cleaner enzymes.
The wool market may be at a seventy-year low, but it’s remained steady for a decade. Globally, the price of fine wools has risen to an all-time high. In the United States, so many major manufacturers have swooped in and snatched up the fine wool clip that smaller businesses are having a hard time sourcing domestic wool for their own products. We need more ranches to enter the game.
Change is happening.
All of this is in response to rising consumer demand and a willingness to pay a premium for domestically made goods. Just like Ladd said, the answer to our wool problem is quite simple: people using it. As the saying goes, supply may win the battle, but demand wins the war.
But we still have the aging problem. Not nearly enough is being done upstream to inspire new people to enter the field, especially young people. Everywhere you look, those who’ve been doing this their whole lives are now retiring, whether it’s small farmers or midsize ranchers or full-scale sheep producers—shearers or scourers or processors or even scientists or small-ruminant specialists.
Without the professors and university courses and active programs for school-aged kids, we risk closing off this world from the next generation. At an ASI speech a few years ago, renowned animal behaviorist Dr. Temple Grandin urged the industry to keep these avenues of exposure open. The only way young people will know if they want to be a part of this industry, she kept repeating, is if they are exposed to it.
Back in my world, much has changed in the intervening years since my own exposure to the bale began.
Emboldened by my MYM degree and embarrassed by my ineptitude at Eugene’s farm on shearing day, I went back to school and obtained my Level 1 ASI certification in wool classing. Sadly, I will never be able to impress Eugene with my newfound wool-skirting skills. He left us on May 29, 2018, before I had a chance to tell him I was writing this book.
The Wool Trust Fund has been given several more budgetary reprieves, allowing ASI to continue its mission. Its Instagram feed is still limping along.
Ladd still keeps Bollman operations steady. Longer wait times suggest that business continues to boom, despite Woolrich having just closed its iconic mill in Woolrich, Pennsylvania, and moved everything overseas. The rebirth of the American Woolen Co. is helping to fill the hole Woolrich leaves behind.
Back in Maine, Lindsey Rice has bought a four-bowl Sargents Scouring Train of his own and is now offering scouring as part of his fiber-processing services. His wife and daughter attended wool-classing school with me and hinted at even bigger plans for the mill, including Global Organic Textile Standard Certification.
Having finally decided to slow down, Anne and Marc have put Blackberry Ridge up for sale. They have no takers yet. Until then, Anne continues to play beautiful music with her equipment.
Kristine and Adrienne are still flourishing in the Bay Area. Occasionally Adrienne finds walnut-dyed raccoon footprints around a new gelato tub of walnuts that is in its third year of aging on the back patio.
