Back in 2002, Karen Hostetler and her friend Valerie Spanus wanted to open a gift shop in their little Wyoming hometown, the sort of place that sold locally made products to tourists.

I have a good friend. We say, well, maybe we should have a hobby now that our kids are in school.

And we both thought it would be fun to have something that had something to do with wool just because of where we live.

And we live in Buffalo, Wyoming.

The history of the Basque Shepherd is very strong here.

There's sheep all over.

But Karen and her friend ran into a problem.

Even though they lived in the heart of Wyoming's sheep country,

wool was hard to find. In a state that had over half a million sheep at the time, a state that

produced over three and a half million pounds of wool that year, it was hard to find a rancher

who would sell it to them. Why was it so hard to buy Wyoming wool in Wyoming?

In this episode, I traveled to Northern Wyoming to solve that mystery.

Where was all that wool going?

And how did one housewife, searching for a hobby, bring that wool back,

and end up becoming a central player in the revitalization of a dying American industry.

You're listening to Fiber Nation, tales of textiles, craft, and culture.

I'm your host, Alison Corleski. Hey! Hey, it is so good to see you.

Good to see you. They let me in through the back, so I hope that that's okay.

That's great. All right. So it smells like a wool mill in here. Walk into a wool mill and the first things that hit you are the noise and the smell.

The noise is like any factory, bangs, whirring, random whistles.

The smell, though.

The smell clobbers you like a two-by-four wrapped in a wet towel.

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