Holly wrote: "And the things I express as personal experience--like the eash of plucking undercoat from a shedding goat--you dismiss as not true."
I never said it wasn't easy to pluck the undercoat from a shedding goat. What I said - - from personal experience - - was that getting the hair out of the goat undercoat quickly was too hard to make the process a viable one for ordinary people. Today shorn cashmere is sent off to a processor to remove the hair. It isn't something done at home. And I do realize that less hair comes out with plucking than with shearing. But if one had to depend on this process to make clothing for a family in Northern Europe, they would freeze to death before long. Grace Fred and Grace Hatton Hawley Pa
