Clipping mohair

Meet Gertrude, one of our Angora goats.  This picture shows her in her full 6 months of fleece - mohair. Clipping needs to happen twice a year because their fleece grows at an incredible 1"/month.   Mohair looks wonderful in its au-naturel state, still on the goat - full of curly ringlets, though low maintenance (lucky girls)!


We don't have a large flock but the ones we have are bred to produce the best and most consistent fleece.  Gertrude is now 4 years old but her fleece is still very fine and beautifully lustrous (the finest "Young goat" grade). 


Why Gertrude is in our blog spot this week is because she, and all her fellow goats have just had their 6 month clip in time for this really hot weather (and the flies that come with it).

Here she is after the clip - enjoying the sunshine! 


What is mohair used for?
Well, mohair has many wonderful qualities that make it lovely for anything from the warmest jumpers through to hard-wearing upholstery velvet, but what it is most famous for is traditional teddy bears! Steiff bears still to this day use mohair for their gorgeous teddies!


If you knit and would like to try some of the very best I'd recommend New Forest Mohair !

Olympic Champion (I don't mean me!)

Did I feel small?  Yes!  

This picture was taken last week when I was lucky enough to meet Ben Hunt-Davis, gold medal winner at the Sydney Olympic Games 2000.  

He was very inspiring as he talked to a packed hall about his team's amazing progress to win the men's coxed eight rowing event.

I don't think any of us underestimates the effort that goes into becoming an Olympic champion (nor the sheer amount of talent!)

Ben was incredibly humble, explaining how in many ways they were the under-dogs; after eight years they were consistently ranked seventh or eighth in the world and never quite achieved any glory or won any medals but they were determined not to let anything get in the way of a medal at Sydney!  Rather than doing the same thing but harder, they changed their whole way of doing things and tested their every action against one question:

"Will it make the boat go faster?"

And this was the question that they then applied to every aspect of their lives in the 2 years running up to those Games.  Every single day they would aim to implement one small improvement. It was this that moved them from being an "average" top level rowing team to a Gold Medal Olympic rowing team.

It was an interesting thought – “Will it make the boat go faster?” –  it's not just relevant to rowers or even sportsmen. Ben urged us all to think properly about what the question should be in our businesses.

I'm now reading Ben’s book “Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?” and can thoroughly recommend it.

So – will I be making my boat go faster? I sure will!