Hello Possums!

I have been busy. Softest merino/possum/silk pants, see the halo surrounding this fabric.

This yarn will be used to make pants and hats, as I feel that sweaters and cardigans may be a bit too fluffy for little people who tend to suck their clothes. These pants will be available from the website in a couple of days, at the same price as all of our pants. They are lightweight, but oh so warm. The only colour available at present is "natural" a light donkey brown, with lighter and darker flecks in the halo.

Finding good suppliers is difficult when you run a small business, we make elite garments in small numbers, suppliers want the big business, they want us to outsource to India, buy 700 kgs of yarn, instead of the 7kg we want to order, so we keep looking, and listening until one by on we find the wonderful suppliers we need. People who bank cheques once a month, and throw in a bit extra "to fill the carton" people who ask about your kids when you phone to place an order, people who care about how much you love their yarn.

So when I finally tracked down a source of quality merino/possum/silk blend yarn, I was over the moon with delight. This yarn is soft, in the way that clouds look soft, if I could get away with wearing knitted pants, I would knit them out of this yarn. I would look like a tall teddybear, but I would be cosy!

I understand that many people have concerns about the use of fur, but for NZ'ers the possum is a huge pest and a threat to our environment and agriculture. The Australian brushtail possum was introduced to NZ in 1837, to start a fur trade, as NZ had no native mammals (except 2 tiny bats), the possums spread rapidly, until today when they number 70 million, and eat over 20 thousand tons of vegetation a night, they also eat native bird chicks and eggs (many NZ native birds, including the Kiwi are flightless) and spread bovine TB, threatening our dairy herds. The WWF have sanctioned the "commercial harvesting" of possums as a way of eradicting them from NZ. In NZ the possum has no natural predators, left unchecked it will continue to spread and destroy native birds and bush.

info:http://www.doc.govt.nz/templates/page.aspx?id=33423

http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/publications/infosheets/possums/

http://www.maninnature.com/AFibres/Trapping/Trapping1b.html