The Wool Wanderers Find a Home by Deb Witwicki
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An active imagination might readily map the story from these iconic beginnings to Leslie’s current location at The Fibre Nook, where she is co-owner with Ros Gullickson. However, more detail is welcome for the delight of getting to know Leslie better and the need to dispel the obvious, but incorrect, conclusions this introduction might provoke.
The life cycle of wool, from sheep to shop and onto the needle, is bred in the bone of Fibre Nook co-owner Ros Gullickson. She was born in the little town of Bairnsdale in southeastern Victoria, Australia. Her grazier father raised sheep and cattle and grew such crops as barley and oats on a farm in a small community near the Gippsland Lakes.
What would Papa (Clifton Price’s paternal grandfather) make of his strapping, six-foot grandson knitting up a little dishcloth?
That question was on Price’s mind as he travelled to Ontario six years ago to visit both sets of his grandparents. It wasn’t as if the young man was put off by what people might think of him knitting. After all, he was then clicking his needles in the Alberta oil fields where he worked as Measurement Well Drilling Engineer, fending off such comments from the roughnecks as, “Come on man, you’re not fxxxing knitting?”