Snail Mail #9

Howdy-doo-dee. How do you do? It’s Michael, and I’ve returned for another email. Sorry I’m late with this! As always, a wrench was thrown into the spokes of business, and I had to chase after it like a dog chasing a bone!

For those of you unaware: this is Snail Mail, a weekly (sometimes) email detailing what is happening behind the scenes at Iron Snail HQ.

Today, I shall tell the story of “The Billy Goat Miracle,” a title I just made up in real-time. Next week with be about Mammoths and denim. However, first...

The Prologue & Chapter 1 (Denim) Update

I almost told the full story here but decided “The Billy Goat Miracle” was far more interesting. 

In short, the Prologue & Chapter 1 jeans are FINALLY on their way to me. Right after I sent the email telling you all that denim would be ready to show in two weeks…UPS lost a huge order of fabric used for the pockets of the jeans. This is no ordinary pocket fabric, so re-sourcing it proved to be a headache. It's also wildly expensive (as far as jean pockets go) but that's neither here nor there.

The problem is solved, the production samples are made, and I’m hoping to have some nice little photos on the site by this Wednesday/Thursday of next week.

The Billy Goat Miracle

HEADS UP: the image below is of raw wool. It's greasy, it's dirty, it needs a good bath (just like me). The following images will show said bath. That is NOT a sheep's body. A few people have asked me this.

Anyway, "The Billy Goat" is the Iron Snail’s foray into the world of sweaters.

No, the sweater does not involve a goat, only the “Tale” does; it does involve sheep, though. Anyway, a few months ago, I found an amazing USA-based bulky knitting manufacturer. They make knits and sweaters for some of the highest-level brands out there, and their work is beyond stunning. The owner is probably one of the biggest yarn nerds I’ve ever seen. She spends her free time helping Italian mills develop cashmere yarns. The problem, however, is that she told me in her 20 years of business, she’s never come across a USA-spun yarn that really thrilled her (I want to make a thrilling sweater). She strongly recommended I look into Italy and Ireland if I wanted to go truly “Far Beyond The Grade.” This is not to say there aren’t thrilling spinners in the USA, as proven shortly.

The problem here was that I had already bought 1,000 lbs of raw wool that was currently being spun into yarn…in the USA. If this yarn was low quality, it would be a pretty devastatingly costly mistake for me to have made. Luckily, the title of this story is “The Billy Goat Miracle” and not “The Billy Goat Tragedy.”

I bought the raw wool from a family farm in Wyoming after connecting with a woman who travels the USA grading sheep’s wool for a living. We'll be meeting Lisa in a video soon, she's incredible. We connected because I was looking for a specific breed of sheep’s wool for “The Billy Goat,” and she based her business around finding the best examples of that very sheep—how delightful! I emailed her, and she hurried me onto a phone call and exclaimed that she had just finished shearing a flock of sheep with exceptional quality wool and that I could buy it all at that very moment if I wanted to. I did, and I did. She sold me! Guilty!

She then connected me to a wool mill that would clean the wool, spin it into yarn, dye it, and zip it off to the knitters for me. These are some pictures from the scouring process.

Finally, I sent a small sample cone of wool to the knitters, ready for it to be torn apart. Up until this point I’d spoken to the owner of the knitting mill probably 3 - 4 times and she’d always been VERY blunt about what works and what doesn’t. To my surprise, instead of tearing the yarn apart, she asked if I could connect her to the mill so she could meet them and work with them on more projects.

Now, I’m thrilled to say that the wool sourcer, wool mill, knitters, and I, have formed a little club/supply chain. I ended up putting them all on an email so they could meet and they all complimented each other on their respective work. It was the most wholesome moment I’ve had in the biz so far, truly. I felt like we put a rocket on the moon.

The wool mill said our fiber is some of the cleanest, strongest, and best-feeling wool they've worked with in a long, long time, and the owner of the knitting mill said this is the best yarn she’s ever seen made in the USA—she told me she was talking with her production manager and kept saying: “Can you believe this is made in the USA?!”. In short, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I don’t want to reveal too much information about the wool yet, but my original goal was to balance softness with strength. If there were two levels of “imperceptible softness” with Merino, why not use coarser, longer wool that feels quite similar? That way we can have a more durable sweater that’s still next to skin safe. That was my initial idea, anyway. Time will tell.

And so, birthed from this new tiny supply chain is "The Billy Goat," the first of it's kind, but certainly not the last. A sweater that should be resoundingly strong while still soft, and from what I can find on the internet, the first to use this type of yarn on a larg(er) scale. The yarn is going to be dyed in around three weeks, and then we’ll be off to knitting! Right now, we’re finalizing two patterns with a small bit of “sample” yarn we had spun. That way, I can test them/show you all what they look like.

I am QUITE excited about this. This is the first project that I’ve done starting at the literal fiber level and it’s really, really interesting. I’m planning on flying to the farm, meeting the wool sourcer, and going to the knitters in a video soon. That way I can show you everything firsthand. Or I guess secondhand. 

That's all for now! I love this graphic Mr. JustOkay made for the Snail so I'm going to include it on the email 3 times.

- Michael