“In Wales, there is a saying that we work and live by: ‘Ara’ deg mae mynd ymhell’
”This roughly translates to ‘Go Slowly and Go Far.’ Our products are the culmination of hundreds of years of British textile industry, and thousands of years of farming. We understand the inherent value in the raw fleeces all our products come from, and it’s impossible to hurry the sheep along!”
Garthenor
The organic wool company Garthenor was born in the 1990s on the King family farm in the Cambrian Mountains of Mid Wales. In the early days Sally King spun the wool herself from the family’s own Ryeland, Shetland, Herdwick and Manx Loaghtan sheep - that is, until demand for their certified organic and undyed yarn began to outstrip supply. Now the Kings supplement their own production with raw fleeces they source directly from farmers across the UK, and their yarn is sold across the UK. This means you can draw a direct line from the wool on your needles to the sheep in the paddock.
The farm already had organic certification, so the family worked with the Soil Association to establish an organic textile standard to include wool - standards that were finalised in 2003 when Garthenor Organic Pure Wool became the first fully certified organic yarn in the world.