The woman will not sell all her sheep. The up-time Merino sheep will be bred in Germany. And she is selling some, but not all, of her Angora rabbits. Which, as rabbits do, are reproducing in great numbers. Rapidly. Very rapidly. So much so, that the insane woman is now furnishing breeding pairs of them to others. At no cost. With contracts to purchase the product of said rabbits.

While the quantities will be small for years to come, especially of the Merino wool, the quality of the fabric is better than anything we have. This is partly because of the Angora rabbits, but I must tell you, Cousin, that the wool of the up-timer sheep is better than any in Spain. So Spain no longer has the best wool in the world. As well, these sheep produce more wool. They were bred to do so, after all.

Carlos, yesterday at the Exchange I saw a young woman, the daughter of a farmer, wearing an Angora-wool blend top. That girl was wearing finer woolens than Her Imperial Majesty, the queen of Spain possesses. A farmer's daughter! Can you imagine it, Cousin? "Here, Your Majesty, we have the best wool in Spain. Granted it's not quite so good as a farmer's daughter wears in barbaric Germany, but it's almost as good." What price will Spain's fine Merino wool bring when this becomes common knowledge throughout Europe? And it will. The farmer's daughter was quite proud of her "Angora sweater," marveling at its soft comfort, having her friends feel the softness while she spoke of its warmth. There is no keeping this secret, even if almost no one can get cloth made of the angora-wool blend. Simply the fact of its existence must bring down the price of our Spanish wool.

Yet there is good news, or at least a potential way to compensate for the lost profit that the family will face. Up-time they had machines to spin wool and other fabrics at tremendous speed and low cost. None of those machines made the transition. But, sooner or later, they will reinvent the machine. At that point, wool cloth made in Germany will cost not that much more than washed wool from Spain and the window of opportunity will close.



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