What exactly is wool?
Wool is more than just sheep's hair: it's a protein fiber made of keratin, capable of bending thousands of times without breaking. Discover the science behind this extraordinary material.
When you hold a skein for the first time, you are unknowingly touching a true marvel of natural engineering. Wool is not just simple sheep's hair: it is a protein fiber, composed almost entirely of keratin — exactly the same protein that makes up your own hair and nails. This biological kinship explains why so many people find wool so naturally pleasant to the touch: our body "recognizes" this material in a certain way.
What makes keratin so special in wool is its fibrous and flexible structure. It allows each strand to bend, stretch, and return to its original shape, over and over again, without breaking. It is this same property that gives your knits their beautiful long-lasting shape and explains why a well-maintained wool sweater can last for decades, while a synthetic garment may lose its shape after a few washes.
Around the world, there are more than 200 recognized sheep breeds, and each produces wool with slightly different properties. Climate, diet, the terrain where the animal lives — all of this influences the texture, length, and fineness of its fleece. This is why two fleeces from the same breed, but from two different farms, never spin quite the same way. For those who regularly spin or weave, this variability is not a defect: it is precisely what makes each batch of wool tell a different story.
At Makeloo Studio - Laine Québec inc., it is precisely this diversity that we seek to highlight rather than standardize. When we receive a fleece from one of our partner farms in Lanaudière, we do not try to "correct" it to make it look like all the others — instead, we try to understand its specific qualities to make the best possible yarn from it. A Dorset fleece will not have the same texture as a mixed-breed fleece; and that's a good thing, because it enriches our entire range of De par chez nous products.
The next time you handle a skein, take a moment to feel its suppleness, its slight loft, its ability to regain its shape between your fingers. You are literally holding a helical molecular structure, capable of bending thousands of times without breaking — an feat that few fibers, natural or synthetic, can claim.
Source: International Wool Textile Organization, Wool Notes, Issue 3 (2024).