We all want to see a cleaner, greener, and more eco-friendly world. But if we are genuinely going to make things better, we shouldn't be turning to single-season synthetic and environmentally-damaging fabrics. We should return to traditional, sustainable, and long-lasting materials like wool!

Wool is a well known material, as old as the hills, but there are also lots of things not everyone knows about woolly hats and you have been asking us lots of questions. We thought we would collate some of them and put the answers here.

When visiting the vet earlier today, a visit we really didn’t want to have to make, she said something to us that is so true, yet it is not something many of us ever talk about. “Where there is life, there is death”. The circle of life is of course something we all understand and accept. It’s only when things happen before their natural conclusion, we feel we have been robbed, such is the level of unfairness. Adrian was 18 months old and so very special to us. She was a real light in our lives and brought us joy every single day…

The classic woolly hat goes by an assortment of local names. It turns out that in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia, the term "beanie" is normally applied to a wool knit hat and it’s interchangeable with a Tuque, Touque and Toque in Canada and parts of the US. Touque, Toque and Tuque is in fact the same wool hat as a Beanie with three distinct spellings. And last but not least in the southern states of America, Toboggan is the name for a wool knitted hat that is worn during the colder months.

Over the last few months we’ve been asked some really interesting questions about sheep and Scotland. So this is the first blog post in which we’ll try to answer the first of many questions. I’m Anita, nice to meet you and this is my first WELAN blog post.

If you are anything like me and can’t help but go all doe-eyed around sheep, Scotland is a country you never have to look far to see one or two sheep. In fact, it would seem sheep outnumber Scotland’s human population by over a million according to National Records of Scotland and the Scottish Government’s statistics on agriculture.

Having trialled a number of different wool care and cleaning routines, in my experience, the cleaning routine that really works is letting my woolly hat air as much as possible in between wears, with a surface spot clean if needed. When washing can’t be avoided, I hand wash the wool hat in cold water with a very gentle organic wool cleaner. After a single cold rinse and a gentle squeeze (the towel method is best), I re-shape my wool hat and lay it flat on a drying rack at room temperature. I found this the best way to care for my woolly hat and a cleaning routine that really works.

Tired of a life chasing corporate stuff, with not a moment to ourselves, we set off to find a new home in a remote part of Scotland. That new home was found on the Isle of Tiree, after a long search throughout Scotland. One day, we found ourselves saying yes to the offer of taking in an orphan lamb. One lamb turned to seven, and seven turned to 13. That is how we ended up on a tiny island with a flock of sheep…

Knowing a little about wool and having relied on it on many an adventure, I was intrigued by some of the benefits and how they could greater impact our lives - not just as an environmental and sustainable solution to clothing, but also on an individual basis. Wool has a multitude of qualities that make it so useful, but it has only been recently that scientific research has been developed to further our understanding of just how beneficial it can be.