Just before the pandemic I think it was, someone pointed out a website in–I don’t remember if it was Australia or New Zealand, the former I think, of a startup that had gotten permission to raise what would otherwise be an exotic and potentially invasive species to harvest its fur by combing. To try to make cashmere just that old stuff by comparison.

Fox fur.

Huh. Y’know, sheep are a little more docile towards that process–and feeding them–! I thought as I looked at their multiple-$k sweaters out of sheer curiosity because how could one not, I mean, would they go for fast-fashion styles or classic to wear a lifetime. Memory says classic.

I’d give you the link, too, but the company appears long gone as far as I can find. I’m guessing that exotic clothes to impress others had their market drop away while everybody was holed up alone and at home month after month after month after month after month.

And now a yarn store–in Ukraine!–is selling cones of merino/fox yarn. Mill end closeouts from that business seems a logical leap.

I have questions.

My daughter once had a cat that learned to leap at the closet door until it got the handle to turn so that it could get at and destroy her cashmere gloves, and did. Wool, no problem, but goats must die.

If one were to knit and wear something out of that fox fur, how would you ever walk past any dog? If you gifted someone something from it, surely you would have to forewarn them?

I’m picturing some of the early adopters patronizing that business while it lasted (maybe it’s actually still out there?) and wondering what experiences they had with them and and and. So many questions.

Like, who was the first person to stroke a fox and think there ought to be a yarn made out of that?

I would wonder if maybe the whole thing was an April Fool’s prank that someone forgot to take down on April 2.

Except that that yarn really is for sale.