Another mystery solved?

 Here's an addendum to yesterday's post. It turns out that the "engaging name of Ravensdown" stamped on the mystery wool sack is basically New Zealand speak for  "fertiliser".  Yes, my lovely wool was in an apparently recycled, albeit very clean, fertiliser bag.  I admit to being a bit deflated when I learned this fact; the name Ravensdown had conjured such lyrical images in my fertile (I had to say it) mind.   It makes sense though.  In New Zealand,  an island country and very "green", the ranchers, as ranchers everywhere do, would use what they had available.   It all just adds to the reclamation aspect of this entire adventure.  Back to earth we come.  Recycle. Reuse. Right and good.

         But it doesn't end there.  My research lead me to Woolipedia and to the information that wool has historically been used for fertiliser.  For decades it has been researched as a highly desirable source of slow release nitrogen and much of the research has been taking place in New Zealand, where the company, Ravensdown, is a major supplier of agricultural fertiliser.  Could it be that the beautiful, colored fleece, not white enough for the textile industry, had been originally destined to be fertiliser?  Was my Romney treasure in a fertilser bag for a very good reason?  Maybe.  But that's conjecture.  I know for sure that the wool is well shorn, well skirted, as nice as many fleeces I've seen for sale, and it came to me from another spinner's stash.  Beauty is in the eye of the spinner.

      All this just makes me more determined to make something wonderful from the mystery wool.  At the very least I could use it to grow tomatoes.  It is already turning out to be a yarn spinner's gold, in more ways than one.