A bit of Welsh heaven!

Back in Ceredigion for our annual chill-out and WOW! were we lucky with the weather! Almost everyday was glorious sunshine - just a bit of har on a couple days that never quite cleared the coast. We always plan circular walks, each one taking in a section of the Coastal Path. This time we did Aberporth to Cwmtydu, Newquay to Cwmtydu, Mwnt to Aberporth, St Dogmaels to Poppit, and Poppit to Cemaes Head, and we also had a smashing trundle over Carningli. All the routes can easily be found here.

At this time of year the place is smothered in flowers - from the almost fluorescent yellow of the gorse to the palest white of the Sea Campion. The bluebells were amazing and the Thrift cam in everything from palest baby pink to almost fuchsia-pink. We found wild violets, heartsease, orchids, sea squill, and loads more. Go much later than the end of May and you miss all this.

Bluebells this time - and gorse

So between walking everyday, a couple of excellent boat trips to watch dolphins, seabirds, seals, and geology, the great local food and the marvellous weather, it's like the tv ads say - why would you want to leave the UK? Having travelled pretty well around the world twice, this part of Wales is still my favourite.

Day 1 - Cemaes Head

Day 3 - Newquay

Thing was, it was also a great test for our merino. We always say you can wear it for days without it getting niffy. This week proved it. Wore the same blue T from the start to the end! And no - no-one dived out the door when I went for a pint. As a daisy I was!

Day 6 on Carningli

Another flower-strewn part of the costal path

Llangranog coast

Coast path from Newquay to Cwmtydu

Sea Campion

Heartsease

Spring Squill

Aberporth

Dairy Cottage, Brongwyn

Llangranog from Penrhip

Bronwgwyn cottages

Tripehound

It's a fair way down!

Dolphin at Aberporth

On the coastal path

Polyester fibres with activated carbon - green or not?

Got asked about a brand that uses a mix of merino and polyester with activated carbon.  It's claimed that this combination 

"absorbs a wide range of odour molecules within the activated carbon and aids the natural anti bacterial properties of Merino wool. The major benefit of these blended fabrics is the vastly reduced drying time for these fabrics,"

What they don't tell you is that according the fabric manufacturer's own website, this carbon-coated polyester needs a heat source, like a tumble dryer, or ironing, in order for the odour trapped by the carbon molecules to be released.  So if you don't dry it at a high enough temperature - it's going to smell.  Just how high a temperature they don't say, but tumbling dry merino can not only damage it, it wears it out faster.  Any use of power to assist drying is NOT "green".

Carbon has always been used to trap odours, but the traditional process of turning coconut husks into carbon creates a lot of pollution. According to the eco-carb website, at a conservative estimate the four leading countries: India, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia emit about 350 Million MT/year of Methane a year to the atmosphere by the pit method of charring. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 350,000 midsize cars (driven 20,000 miles/yr). Some activated coconut carbon is produced using co2 capture  technology - but how would you know?

Is this then is just another attempt to cheapen production of merino wool clothing? Merino wool does not need any help with it's odour-resistance. It does this naturally and washing at low temperature and line drying is enough to keep it sweet. Merino fabric weights of 185-195gsm also dry quickly anyway, and even when damp, will still keep you warm.

There is nothing, in our opinion, that a polyester fibre, with or without carbon, can add to the performance qualities of genuine superfine New Zealand Merino.  All it does is create an even greater carbon footprint, and the polyester is not biodegradable, sustainable or renewable.

How is activated carbon made from coconut husks?



a. Separate and clean coconut shell from other materials, such as coconut fiber or soil.
b. Sun dry.
c. Burn dried coconut shell at 300-500 oC for 3-5 hours.
d. Soak charcoal in chemical solution, (CaCl2 or ZnCl2 25%) (Calcium Chloride or Zinc Cholride 25%) for 12-18 hours to become activated charcoal.
e. Wash charcoal with distilled/clean water.
f. Spread on tray at room temperature to be drained.
g. Dry in oven at temperature 110 oC for 3 hours.
h. Crush or refine activated charcoal

Hmm - and this is before even more processing to combine with non-renewable, non-sustainable petro-chemical derivative polyester.  Doesn't sound very environmentally friendly to us!

Choices for a Better Life

Choices for a Better Life - a guide to choosing sustainably produced, ethically made clothing

To quote Australian journalist Dan Hanks:

"Even the most innovative or seemingly innocent products can have a murky origin.  Your IPad/IPhone apps and games may lose their fun when you consider the Apple workers committing suicide in China.   And Valentine’s Day becomes ever so slightly more nauseating when you learn that those chocolates you bought the parent of your children may have furthered the slave trade of other children in Africa.  Human actions always seem to have an impact somewhere in the world.  All we can do is try to mitigate or fix the problem once we are made aware and move on better for it. "

One of the most significant and relatively easy changes we can make is with our clothing.  For almost everything we buy there is an ethically and more environmentally-friendly produced choice

Anyone who has any pretensions of caring for the environment and/or the welfare of their fellow human-beings should not be ignoring how and where their clothing is produced.    We MUST learn that “cheap” clothing carries an unacceptably high environmental and human cost.

LABOUR

Over three out of every four garments sold now come from China, a country renowned for its low production costs—and low wages, long hours and ineffective labour laws. China’s competitiveness depends on being able to supply clothes at extremely short notice, at an extremely low cost.

Due  to the current financial climate, retailers are putting even more pressure on manufacturers demanding ever-cheaper prices to protect their own margins. For Chinese factory workers, that means longer hours and less pay. There is now a backlash in China from the workers who are now demanding high wages and better conditions.  Few are getting them.

Whilst not all Chinese manufacturers exploit their workers they  will often out-source work to smaller, cheaper production units, where there is little or no control.  

Even where factories claim “environmental accreditation” it is impossible for them to avoid the fact that over 70% of China’s power comes from coal-fired power stations (many of them illegal), which use high-sulphur (dirty) coal that causes massiv environmental pollution, and is mined in the most dangerous coal mines in the world.

China’s low wage economy is also impacting on third-world producer such as Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh where wages and conditions are utterly appalling.

A year ago, the It Sportswear factory in Bangladesh burned down, causing the deaths of 29 workers and injuring many more.  The factory, belonging to the Hameem group, supplied US brands and retailers, including VF corporation who now own Smartwool/Timberland including Howies.

Recently two more workers perished and over fifty were injured in a stampede triggered by panic after a boiler explosion at Eurotex. This brings the list of workers killed in unsafe garment factories since 2000 to at least 339. Most of the victims were producing clothes for well-known international brands when they died.

Most companies here in the west have chosen to ignore the serious social and environmental consequences of fabric production, dyeing and clothing manufacture. Chocolate Fish Merino is almost alone in using exclusively New Zealand-made merino fabric, and having its garments made in New Zealand (it is simply not possible to have them made here in the UK ).

Links:  Labour behind the Label

            Environmental Justice Foundation

            Clean Clothes Campaign

FABRICS

These are some of the environmental facts and figures behind textiles and clothing production:

Cotton

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, a single, non-organic cotton t-shirt uses roughly 1.5 kilograms of chemicals (pesticides and fertilisers)  to grow the cotton and dyeing it uses 16 to 20 litres of water. By some calculations, purchasing one cotton t-shirt means purchasing 1.7 kilograms of fossil fuel, depositing 450 grams of waste in a landfill and emitting four kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Switching to organic cotton may not help much either. Unfortunately cotton garments with ‘100% organic’ labels could still be dyed with polluting chemicals and made in sweatshops.

The facts, according to the International Labour Organisation, are as follows:

Cotton farming uses 25% of the world’s pesticides. Those pesticides kill cotton farmers.

The International Labout Organization estimates that every year, 40,000 agricultural workers die and up to five million are poisoned by pesticides. A single drop of aldicarb, the biggest-selling cotton pesticide, can kill an adult when absorbed through the skin.

Worse, farmers are paying to be poisoned. Pesticides account for half the cost of producing cotton, with prices set by multibillion-dollar corporations, while subsidies for US cotton growers depress the global price paid for cotton. Cotton farmers in the developing world are frequently in debt and suicide by pesticide is common, killing a further 200,000 farmers a year.

Synthetics

Nylon, acrylic and polyester. These synthetic fabrics are made from oil-derived, non-sustanable, non-renewable plastic pellets, and they never break down. This season’s polyester top will still be around more than 800 seasons from now.  Ten new polyester plants have been built in China in the past few years!

Nano-silver

Silver nano-particles have been used for some time now to try to stop the build-up of stink associated with synthetic clothing.  This process is neither very effective or environmentally friendly. The US Natural Resources Defense Council has launched lawsuits in the US to s top the use of products containing nanosilver as a growing number of questions associated with assessing the hazard of and exposure to nanosilver and other nano-scale metal-based pesticides and treatments have not been properly assessed.  A summary of silver toxicity and regulation: need for stirngent registration review of nanosilver.

Cellulose-based Rayons

Tencel, Modal - all man-made fabrics with some of the useful properties of synthetics - but spun from wood or bamboo* pulp.  Unlike synthetics these fabrics will eventually biodegrade.  However they are still made from chemicals, and whilst some may be made with a closed-loop system, not all are and the consumer has no way of knowing the truth.  

*US Federal Trade Commission

In addition, as these fabrics do not start with a yarn, as does wool and cotton, much more energy is used to create the yarn from the raw materials, creating an even larger carbon-footprint.

Hemp

This is a fibre we should be using a lot more. It has half the ecological footprint of cotton.  It can be grown in cool climates like New Zealand, the UK, Europe etc., and with barely any irrigation or pesticide. Hemp fibre can produce wonderful fabrics that are a perfect replacement for cotton and linen.

Traceable Merino.

Buy a Chocolate Fish garment and you are guaranteed that it is made from New Zealand Merino for a small group of Sheep Stations contracted to Zque.   The fabric we use is MAPP - Merino Performance Programme - from Designer Textiles, Auckland.  

Zque accreditation is an independently audited certification scheme that guarantees traceable New Zealand merino and ensures animal welfare.

Dyes

Over 700,000 tonnes of dyes are used to colour 40 million tonnes of fabric every year. About 45,000 tonnes of that dye is discharged into rivers and streams. Salt water, used to set the colour, is discharged too—often into freshwater streams, making it impossible to grow anything in the surrounding soil.

Chlorine is also used, combined with a polymer coating, in countries like China to treat wool to make it smooth and machine washable.  Chlorine and polymer treatments lead to huge problems of ground-water pollution, in particular with dioxins. Legislation in New Zealand prevents this.  In addition, Designer Textiles International is committed to exceeding minimum standards and using best practices throughout their supply chain to meet these responsibilities.  Their waste water is neutralised on site before being collected by the Local Water Treatment Authority.  Even air discharge from the mills is in compliance with NZ's strict legislation.

Natural dyes, made with ingredients like onion skins and beetroot, are biodegradable and non-toxic. Unfortunately, they’re also expensive, labour intensive, and don’t always last well, fading badly in sunlight. Worse, some mordants used to fix natural dyes contain heavy metals, making them not much better than synthetic alternatives. For now, completely natural dyes just aren’t viable on a large commercial scale.

MAPP Merino has compliance with conditions set by ETAD, The Ecological & Toxicological Association of Dyes and Organic Pigments Manufacturers.  The dyestuffs and chemicals are supported by certificate of compliance ISO 9001.  Their handling of chemicals is certified with requirements of the Regulations under the Hazardous Substances Act 1996. The product is not exposed to formaldehyde. Their energy efficiency is constantly monitored and machinery maintained regularly to minimise energy use

36.6 Double-possum "Wind-Killer" Range

NEW!  MKM 36.6 Wind-killer Zipnecks, Hooded tops & Gilets

 
The designers at MKM have been busy.  First they brought us the luxuriously soft and warm Mount Merino-Possum zipnecks. Then there was the heavy duty wind-resistant MKM Original zipneck.  Now, they've combined these in the new 36.6 Double-possum wind-killer range.

The 36.6 range is ingeniously knit so the wool is on the outside and the possum is on the inside. We think of them as "armadillos" - tough on the outside, soft on the inside
There's more info here on our website.

We think these will be of particular interest to fishermen, photographers, cameramen, bird-watchers, tree surgeons, stargazers, subset watchers - the sort of folk whose work or interest keeps them in one place for any length of time.

These are for Special Order only at the moment,  Orders should be placed before 4th February and we hope to have them shipped from New Zealand to us for despatch by about the 20th February.

If these prove as popular with customers as they have with us, we think they could become part of our standard winter range.

Wool and lthe "Itch" factor

The uncomfortable sensation known as ‘itch’ or 'prickle' that is sometimes attributed to wool clothing and bedding is widely misunderstood.  Common misconceptions are that it is due to an allergy to wool, or caused by the scales of the wool fiber. Both of these explanations are incorrect.

Academic research has shown that allergy to wool is quite rare, and a study has shown the lack of any correlation between a subject’s fabric prickle response and their response to wool allergen extracts via a standard scratch test. In other words, people who showed an allergic response to wool found the prickliness of a particular fabric sample no worse than those who did not show an allergic response.

Neither are the scales of the wool fibre likely to cause prickle as they are far too small, protruding less than one 1000th of a millimeter from the surface of the fibre. The degradation of wool fibre scales, routinely carried out on coarse grade wool as part of the process to make wool machine washable, does not remove prickle from a garment for which it is a problem. In spite of this, the misconception about scales causing prickle is often reported.

The actual cause of prickle in wool fabrics (and in fact in fabrics made from any fibre) is the presence of relatively coarse fibres, stiff enough to press into the surface the skin (like pinpricks). Finer fibres do not press into the skin because they buckle when pressed against it. The pain receptors in the skin only respond if sufficient force is applied to them, and for thick fibres this force is reached before the fibre bends over and buckles. For thinner fibres the pain receptor threshold is not reached before the fibre collapses. The stiffness and the length of the fibres are important too; a very flexible or long fibre has a greater tendency to collapse when its end presses against the skin

Prickle is therefore generally only a problem for wool fabrics because of the fact that thick fibres trigger the pain receptors. Wool fibres come in various finenesses and even the fleece from a single sheep will have fibres across a range of fineness. If these fibres are not sorted to a high enough standard, leaving too many very thin weak fibres in at one end of the spectrum and too many thick coarse fibres at the other, the resulting fabric may be classed as “superfine” based on an average micron count, but the result with be a fabric that itches as well as being uneven and of poor quality.

Unfortunately for the consumer, when we looked at a number of merino fabrics all classed as “superfine”, we found a wide range of fibres being used.  Some of these were way beyond what we would call acceptable in a fabric classed as “superfine” - and these will cause itch.  An example is shown below.  There are more  here which will enlarge when clicked.

It is worth noting however that variability between humans plays a role also. Some people are less sensitive to prickle than others; they either have pain receptors that trigger only at higher forces or they are protected by a thicker layer of skin.

Finally, it also is worth noting that coarse synthetic fibre would be just as prickly as coarse wool. 

                                                                   

Why are there no Merino sheep in the UK?

We often get asked this.  In fact there are a few small flocks of merino sheep here, mostly in East Anglia, but they are not the merino strain that produces the high quality fleece that is used for our gear.  They, like most of the merinos in Europe, are bred for meat.  The NZ Merino that's bred for wool in South Island New Zealand is a completely different strain.

What contributes most to the quality of the wool after genetics, is environment.  In order to produce that amazing fleece, the sheep need dry conditions.  Not only do they not like to get their feet wet, if the grazing is too lush it coarsens the fleece.  The NZ Merino needs to work hard for its dinner!  Rain is the killer for a high quality fleece.  It waterlogs and damages the fleece, the sheep and the grazing.

Attempts have been made here in the UK to produce high quality fleece from merino sheep, but it's at the expense of animal welfare.  To protect the fleece, the sheep have to be kept in barns - and for a free ranging animal like a sheep we think this amounts to animal cruelty.  In addition, if the merino sheep hadn't over the generations been subject to intense cold and heat, they wouldn't have developed the fleece in the first place.  It won't take many generations of keeping them indoors for the fleece quality to deteriorate.

Occasionally some cross-breeding is tried to produce a fine micron fleece, and if this were all there was to it, it could work.  But it isn't.  It isn't just the low micron count that makes superfine NZ merino so comfortable next to the skin, it's the nature of the scales on the wool fibres and their low profile.  On top of this, in order to produce a high quality worsted spun yarn of the sort we need, the wool fibres have to have the right crimp (that's the curl), the right tensile strength, and the right staple (length).  Only when all these factors are in the right balance do you have something to rival the NZ Merino for quality.

Sadly, quality will always be a problem with British wool as we no longer have a national wool testing authority on a par with those that exist in New Zealand and Australia, where they still take wool seriously.  Various claims are made for various breeds now and again, but so far no proof has ever been given as to these claims.  Until samples of the wool produced by these various cross-breeds are sent for independent analysis, and the results published, we advise that all such claims be taken with a pinch of salt.  There is no such thing as an "English Merino".

The price of the wool bears this out.  The most expensive UK wool is that of the Romney/Kent Cross at £1.46 per kilo (uncleaned greasy wool).  Most other breed fleeces come in at well under a £ per kg.  The NZ Merino costs a whacking £7.00 per kg (uncleaned greasy wool)!  Which is why there's no such thing as "cheap merino",  only fake merino, or poor quality wool from merino sheep bred for meat.

Possum Pressies for Christmas

We've decided that everyone should have a possum pressie this Christmas so we've lowered prices on some of our most popular merino-possum accessories.

These are our stripey merino-possum beanies, scarves and gloves.  The scarves are 60" long not inc. the fringe so will wrap round twice easily, or do that loop thingy.

And these are our Koru patterned beanies and gloves.  We also still have a few of the  matching pull-thru scarves left, but only in black.

Check out our other merino-possum gear here.