Wool does not shrink, it felts. This is caused by the raised scales of the cuticle layer of the wool fiber catching on one another. The fibers in a fleece on a sheep are all growing out of the follicles in the same direction and they generally grow at a similar rate. This means that the cuticle scales (which are a bit like the teeth on a saw blade) are all pointed in the same direction. They don't catch on one another. These scales can be seen clearly under a microscope.

After the fleece is shorn, the processing stages cause the natural fibers alignment to be completely disrupted. As the fleece is cleaned and scoured, the "staple" structure is destroyed and the fibers no longer line up "tip to base" as they would in the fleece. The fibers end up in all dimensions and suffer entangling after scouring and drying. The purpose of washing and scouring is to remove unwanted materials and to disentangle and align the fibers into a parallel arrangement for spinning yarn. However the fibers will not necessarily be "tip to base". The scales now can be at 180 degrees to one another, which can cause them to catch on each other.

When the fibers are spun, they come in close contact with each other, and the interlocking nature of the scales is what helps keep the yarn together. Felting usually occurs in the presence of heat, water and agitation, and this acts as a ratchet, tightening the contact between the fibers in the yarn, and then the yarns in the fabric.

Wool tends to felt is because of the scales on the fibers. Other animal fibers have cuticle scales too, but to varying degrees. For instance, the cuticle scales on human hair are much flatter. Fine diameter wools are more likely to felt than broad diameter wools because they have a greater surface area, and hence more scales proportionately.

Shrink-proofing is a chemical treatment of wool, which uses chlorine to "burn" off the scales. This doesn't entirely remove them, but it does lessen their profile. The fibers are then coated with a resin to smooth them further. This allows the wool to be machine washed without felting / shrinkage.

There are mentions of wool in Genesis, so there is no definitive date for this product. The first mentions of wool are probably in Sumerian cuneform where it was a commodity. Since those tablets are over 4,000 years old, it's a good bet that we cannot find a proper date.

An interesting sidenote...when the English "discovered" Egypt, they found the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. What they found was cotton, but they could not conceive of a plant that produced wearable material. Wool was THE material of clothing, so the legend of the vegetable Lamb was born.

When Ogg the Cold figured out that he didn't need to wear the whole sheep skin, just the fuzz.

In the misty dawn of time, Ogg had been wearing the whole sheep skin, but other than keeping his skin baby smooth, he wasn't really impressed with wearing a skin other than his own. After all it was heavy, smelled very bad and was rather short! Ogg was not an especially tall man, but the sheep skin was rather less than adequate for total coverage. Ogg did like the warmth and light weight of the fluff on the other side of the skin, but the problem of the length had to be solved.

One day he noticed that the fuzz of the skin came out of the sheepskin fairly easily and it was rather stretchy. He gathered the fuzz off the skin and pulled it apart and discovered that it would twist together without making a knot in the end. This was an interesting development, so he spent the afternoon twisting the bits of the stretchy fiber together. At the end of the experiment, he had a long, looong piece of wool string. Now this was a fun thing to have but of no apparent use at the moment. Gathering his string together, he headed back to camp.

Unfortunately on the way, he waded through a stream and while trying to keep his balance, he dropped all his nice new string in the stream. While he retrieved the wool, it was a wet and dripping mess. Sighing, he squeezed out some of the water and brought the sodden mass back to the tribal clearing.

Dropping the mess on a used skin by the fire, he explained to his mate, the intrepid Rhonda that he had been experimenting again. Rhonda looked at his skimpier than usual sheep skin and sighed. While the animals did make good eating, the skins were supposed to be fluffy and Ogg's sheepskin was rather lighter than normal. But Ogg generally had good ideas, so she studied the wet mess on the used skin.

It was then that Rhonda had the bright idea to dry out the mess on the yron rock which she had just taken from the fire. Ogg could then have his string to play with, and she could wander the countryside looking for new land features. She slapped the wet wool on the yron and vigorously started pounding another rock on top of the wool to press the water out of it. Steam started to rise from the mass and Rhonda was very satisfied with her initiative.

But a very strange thing started to happen. The mass, while steaming, started to glob together and the more that Rhonda pounded, the firmer the mass became. In a very few minutes, the wool string was indistinguishable as string, and there was a very solid piece of something on the yron! Giving it up as a bad job and waste of time, Rhonda threw the thing off to the side of the clearing in disgust. They went off to sleep without a second thought to the strange mess on the side of the fire. The strange mass landed on a pile of rocks and continued to cool and dry.

The next morning, Ogg leisurely lifted the flat piece of messed up wool and to his surprise, it was strong, tough, and very light. Ogg had the bright idea of putting it on his head as it was rather circular and to his surprise, it kept the sun off his head and out of his eyes! This was a momentous discovery! His friend Gronk had eye problems, and this new discovery would help with the problem of squinting to see.

So thus was born the felted fedora, and a whole new enterprise sprang up. The men (for a change) demanded this strong light head covering and were willing to trade for them.

Rhonda looked at the head covering with amusement, but then an idea slowly began to percolate up through her consciousness. If this thing was so easy to make, just being a matter of smacking the wet fuzz with a rock, how big could the thing be made? She went out after breakfast (grape juice and yeggs) and found one of the short plump animals to irritate. Gathering a very large quantity of the wool off the surrounding bushes and from the animals themselves, she sauntered back to camp to experiment for herself.

Remembering the technique that was used the night before, she carefully heated an yron rock and wet the wool in a pot of beetroot boiling near the fire. But this time she spread the wool over a fairly large piece of flat wood and started pounding the wool with the yron (thereby inventing the process which would later be known as "ironing"...a curse which would not be aleviated until the 20th century.) This resulted in a large piece of fairly flat, damp red wool felt that could be cut! Congratulating herself for an independent invention, she patiently waited for the wool to cool and dry. And the next day, she threaded some strips of hide through holes in now dry wool felt and thereby cured the problem of Ogg's short (and now rather naked) sheep skin. Tailored clothing had been invented. Ogg now had a crude extension under his sheep skin, and the new red shorts didn't impede his walking. Plus the hide strings were adjustable so that he didn't soil them when he needed to relieve himself.

Together Rhonda and Ogg had become the first fashion designers in history. They celebrated with the tribe by hosting a barbecue of a fairly well plucked sheep. This day in history, the 8th day of the month of Graf, was officially declared "fashion day". That is the day that wool was invented. So even now we remember that day with graphic designs of "new" clothing and I even suspect that fashion week began as part of that anniversary, although the link has not been thoroughly investigated.

· Clothes: Jumpers, Socks

· Carpet

· Hats, Scarves and Gloves

· Some Teddies

· Pillows

· Purses

· Blankets, Duvets and Mattresses