Vivir la lana (Living the Wool) is a book of exclusive knitting patterns aimed at connecting all the agents involved in the wool cycle, from the sheep to your needles, passing through each transformation process. We are all equally important agents in the value chain of this raw material.
We offer you our hand and our experience to make a journey from the past to our vision of the future of Spanish wool, capable of generating a change towards a more sustainable, conscious, soft and profitable wool.
Vivir la lana is a book of exclusive knitting patterns by national and international designers, all of them made with Sorrosal wool, the wool that is changing the wool paradigm in our peninsula and that with your help can continue its journey to make itself known and add more actors that make a more profitable, sustainable and conscious future for this wonderful fibre a reality.
This book:
Will reveal the origin of merino wool
It will explain the historical reasons why wool is still such an important raw material in our country:
✔️ It will analyse in a simple way why today it is considered a by-product or even a waste.
✔️ It will open up our knowledge and research on this raw material and the possibilities it offers us now and in the future.
✔️ It values the union of tradition and avant-garde design for the creation of unique and quality garments.
✔️ It will encourage many others to delve into the world of knitting...
👉🏽 Vivir la lana is more than just a book 📔 , it is a pioneering project in the development of a strategy for the creation of an integral, exclusive and differentiated high value product (fine and superfine wools) on the product that is generally available at the moment (medium wools of the Merino breed). This is a very interesting and innovative option for the orientation of sheep production, as a means for the creation and maintenance of employment, as well as a new approach to cover the unsatisfied demand of the wool market.
✊🏽 Our commitment to Sorrosal cattle breeding is the best example of how to take up again the wool path in our territory, offering a wool that is cared for at source, seeking a continuous improvement year after year and a renewal of the wool sector. A wool that is transformed under standards and processes that respect the environment, transmitting all this history, values and properties to the end consumer.
There are clearly and very important people who are looking for a return to knitting and clothing with "real" wool, with natural benefits of durability, comfort and warmth. And if we add the value that comes from local, sustainable, extensive livestock production, their consideration soars, because it is also a very important point for them.
The main objective of Vivir la Lana, therefore, is to generate an increase in the competitiveness of the Spanish agro-industrial wool sector 💪🏽 in the face of the challenges and opportunities that arise in the international textile fibre market. A new productive alternative, based on a clear orientation towards internationalisation, thus favouring national production and the wool textile chain as a whole.
After more than 7 years of intense work and development, dLana
🔍 * We have been able to test our products and obtain valuable feedback from our customers (95% of the public who approach and/or buy from us are women).
👩🏻 * We have been able to listen and observe the market, as well as the currents or fashions that surround the "knitting" or "knitter" world, as we call it informally.
📝 * We have found, together with other companies and entrepreneurs, a new formula, based on collaborative work and solidarity, to improve our situation as rural women as a whole, where we understand the value of our work and promote its visibility, boosting our capacity for entrepreneurship and promoting conditions that facilitate the reconciliation of personal, family and working life.
☝🏼 🔗 * We have achieved the connection of all the sectors (primary, industrial, fashion, commercial, ...) that the wool touches in its path, through a complex organisation chart, which is an innovative step that allows us, without the acquisition of our own livestock and machinery, to maintain and promote not only our business activity, but the economic activity of all the agents that contribute to the presence of our high quality products in the national and international market.
💚 * Putting the entire network created by dLana at the service of Vivir la lana strengthens and consolidates its chances of success and development.
THE ORIGIN
Here we come to the Sorrosal family, the epicentre of the beginning of this project. After all this time spent analysing the situation, researching and developing the product, a large family with a long tradition of cultivating the land and caring for livestock came to us.
All his history, his experience and his learning is poured for years in the care of his livestock together with his brothers, with which they have achieved an excellence very difficult to find in the peninsula and in Europe in general. Spanish Merino sheep, selected and cared for for years, are united with original Merino sheep and descendants of the renowned French Maco Merinos (crossed with Merinos from New Zealand), giving rise to a wool that reaches the highest standards of softness and comfort for the creation of yarns of the best qualities.
THE PROCESSES
Together, after years of research and spinning trials, we have sufficient perspective and courage to propose a change of direction, in which all the influential actors in the wool production and processing chain can be involved and which will significantly increase the profitability of their activities.
We carried out a first test in 2018. And Sorrosal is becoming a benchmark, offering a high quality and smoothness within the reach of very few farms in Spain as yet, which allows us to compete in a very demanding market.
These values and qualities are leading us, on the other hand, to be very well received in foreign countries such as Canada, Japan, Finland and Germany, among others.
Above all, in these countries, they are surprised and admire the history of Spanish merino wool, and especially of the Sorrosal family. We want this to happen in Spain in a similar way and we want to be more aware every day of the value we have, as well as the fact that we can still obtain wool with personality because of the history behind it, processed in its entirety in our territory.
For these cultures, especially the Japanese, history and tradition are added values that they seek in their purchases and then pass on to their customers.
There is also a very strong "back to the origins" trend regarding the consumption of wool with little treatment, natural, free of chemical finishes, which takes care of animals and the natural environment. This is a trend that is also gradually arriving in our country and which, in the United States and Canada, countries with the largest community of weavers in the world, is very important and highly valued.
But, we're sure you're wondering, if we've already managed to get this far with Sorrosal, ...
WHY DO WE CREATE Vivir La Lana?
To understand the need for the paradigm shift that we propose in a simple way **in the book, we offer a walk through the history of wool in Spain, its origins, its splendour and its decline.
In Spain, we have confirmed that both in the context of livestock and textile consumption, the international wool sector in recent years continues to face one of the worst crises in history, with an international wool market with depressed prices, except for fine and superfine wools.
Wool has suffered a loss of value and is considered a by-product, a waste product and a problem both in terms of management and economics, as the yield it provides is low or non-existent. This has also caused a loss of interest, distancing Spanish wool from the renowned Australian, New Zealand or Uruguayan wools, whose main characteristic is their great softness.
With these and other factors, which are detailed in greater depth in the book, we find ourselves in what might appear to be a disadvantaged position in the market, but it is all **these historical aspects and conditioning factors that lead us to propose a new integral model for the transformation of our local wool.
**Vivir la lana, is to immerse oneself fully in the wonderful world of wool, accompanied by brave designers who have faced the "challenge of raw wool", like the best of writers, they have given life to garments and accessories that spectacularly enhance the beauty of natural wool without any additives.
Timeless designs, for a multitude of occasions with which you can learn to combine new techniques or choose how you want to personalise your garment based on the proposed design.
Vivir la lana (Living the wool), is a book with which you will become a Sorrosal producer and you will be directly supporting that:
+ More breeders will investigate our proposal and join us in taking a leap into the future.
+ More factories and artisan families are encouraged to work and give priority to the creation of exclusive limited-production yarns from small farms.
+ Haberdasheries and weaving workshops want to offer locally produced yarns in their shops and catalogues.
+ National and international pattern designers select wools full of soul and history for their exclusive and carefully crafted designs.
+ More conscious knitters will find enough quality and diversity of yarns for all their knitting projects.
With Sorrosal Livestock as a spearhead, we want to promote this product in order to be pioneers and agents of change in the Spanish wool panorama, outlining the lines for the improvement and performance of this raw material.
Going deeper into the Vivir la Lana project, our main objective is to generate an increase in competitiveness for the Spanish wool agro-industrial wool sector, we can talk about two relevant specific objectives.
The first is the development and consolidation of this shared vision of the future that will lead to the design of an innovative improvement plan for national sheep farming, based on research and the preservation of traditions.
The second specific objective, already underway, is to transfer this model throughout the peninsula to more extensive and transhumant livestock farms that want to implement our work methodology, from the sheep to the skein.
It is always an honour for us to be able to promote the values and work behind our wool, which has many benefits for the environment, culture and people's health.
At dLana we are entrepreneurs with a very clear vocation: to base our business action on the values of sustainability and the economy of the common good. Otherwise, the effort to create wealth through a company would make no sense.
For dLana it is essential to offer our potential customers a product created on the basis of the company's fundamental values: responsible consumption, care for the environment and a sustainable vision of work in the fashion sector, understanding the knitting sector as part of this, considered the second most polluting sector on the planet, as well as the one that has accumulated the most scandals about ethical employment for women in the last decade.
**How do we translate these values into our daily business activities? By basing our business strategy and action plan on three axes:
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Recovering the wool value chain, creating a link between the countryside and the city through the union of design and craftsmanship.
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To support the industrial fabric and the economic livelihoods of the people we work with directly and indirectly.
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Communicate and disseminate the cultural values of ancestral traditions such as transhumance as well as the environmental benefits of extensive livestock farming, which would otherwise be doomed to disappear.
This Vivir la lana project is for you if you...
In Vivir la lana there is room for different profiles, each with their own interests, but all with one in common: a more sustainable world. It doesn't matter if you knit or don't knit, it doesn't matter if your relationship with wool comes only from the memory you have of your grandmother crocheting, or if you are a livestock farmer, if you are moved by the environment, or knitting patterns designed by knitters who make magic.
We all have a place in Vivir la lana because this project includes fair treatment of the livestock farmer, animal care, pampering processes, respect for production times, and support for local, autochthonous, proximity work, animal care, the benefits to the land, and the pleasure of weaving with the most authentic wool of the peninsula.
Vivir la lana (Living the wool) is for you if...
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If you are a farmer, because you know how hard it is to find someone who values your work, and from dLana and the hundreds of weavers who weave with our wool know how to appreciate all the effort behind a beautiful skein.
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If you are a conscious knitter and want to be an active part of the change. Because by knitting from home we can also contribute to a better and more sustainable world.
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If you are tired of not knowing where the wool you knit with comes from, **because the more knowledge you acquire, the more power as a consumer you have.
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If you belong to environmental associations or movements and want to support another way of making a positive impact on the planet.
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If you know that, **only together, we can put Spanish wool in the place it deserves.
Esther Chamorro and Javier Benito, we are the main promoters of the dLana business project. We found very interesting the union of the awareness of the rural world of Javi, born in Valladolid, and all his training in relation to climate change, sustainable rural development and environmental management; with the health and personal awareness of Esther, born in Madrid, paediatric nurse, with training in the field of child psychomotor skills, fair trade and development of personal and social skills. All of this, together with an extreme sensitivity and affection for a job well done, respect for animals and the desire for Spanish crafts to be recognised as an immaterial heritage of great value, represent common values that we believe enrich the project we are carrying out.
In addition to these two main profiles, we add the effort and dedication of our direct collaborators in financial and commercial matters, brand image, communication, maintenance of social networks and management of the physical sales space and customer service.
As well as a whole network generated through bonds of trust and collaborative work in which we have livestock farmers, shearers, wool selectors, transformation teams, craftswomen, dyers, weavers, designers, textile experts, ... and which ultimately forms a large and growing multidisciplinary team that is constantly studying the creation of wool with soul and with a great socio-environmental impact on the environment in which all its activities are carried out.
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