About Me

I live in windy West Cornwall on a small farm which is where I make these jumpers on my knitting machine. Before that I lived and worked in London in the environmental sector, most recently helping big brands work out what to do with their waste. Big brands who were very worried about the interest in fast fashion and how polluting it was. I was so disheartened by the trend towards clothing 'made from recycled plastic bottles' which I felt was greenwash at its finest.

I have always had an interest in wool. We wore it at home (my mother used to open all the windows and tell us to put a jumper on if we were cold) and we had a family connection to Shetland - world famous for it's wool - and I love sheep and used to spend every spring lambing for sheep farmers I knew, before I had children. 

I started making these jumpers for our son when he was a baby because we were living in a damp house with no central heating and cotton clothing felt soggy. I spent a lot of my first pregnancy googling 'how to keep babies warm in a damp house' (as well as panicking about Covid). I had difficulty finding 100% wool jumpers for babies online; all I could find was either merino (wonderfully soft but not very strong or suitable as 'outerwear' and not typically grown in the UK), or it had synthetic material in it, described as a 'wool mix' and more often than not, covered in images of dinosaurs, so I started making wool clothing myself without the dinosaurs.

Wool is warm when wet, antibacterial, fire resistant and breathable. If it was discovered today, it would be hailed as a sort of wonder material. My children wear these jumpers day in, day out, on a very windy Cornish penninsula and so do I. They stand up well against the weather, they don't smell and don’t need constant washing unlike every other item of clothing worn by small children.

I started making adult jumpers to match because I had such a lot of demand. They have been unexpectedly and wildly popular and I am very grateful for every order! I don't know much about fashion and I am not a textile artist. I aim to make functional, long lasting clothing that doesn't fall apart.

I only do four colourways per year (they launch in September) because there is just too much choice on the internet and it scrambles my brain.

I post pictures and updates on Instagram but if you really want to know more - sign up to My Life in the Wind, my newsletter. It's free and I write about the jumpers as well as useful and relatable snippets from my life. 

Thank you for reading! 

Lily Gray