Beatrix Potter and the Herdwick Sheep

 

Beatrix Potter and the Herdwick Sheep

Last night we watched a program about Beatrix Potter and her deep connection to the Lake District.  I had forgotten about the work she did to help the Herdwick Sheep thrive.

As a child I knew about Beatrix Potter, but she wasn't my favourite author.  And largely I didn't pay much attention to her as a person.  It was only later that I began to learn much about her.  The program was a great re-introduction to Potter as a person beyond the author and artist that she was best known for.

There are a number of spinners who have written books about the different sheep breeds, if you want to know more about them.  The one I'm most familiar with is the one by Robson and Ekarius. The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook.

But there are others, as well, all of them an enormous labour of love given how much work and effort went into each and every one of them.

And this is why I hate the LLM plagiarism machines.  They scrape the contents of such books and grind them up, spitting them back out with half of the actual technical information mere dust by the time they are done with it.  If you decide to learn via AI, please be aware that the citations may not be real, and the actual information has been twisted into nothing resembling actual facts.

Same with textile science books.  Go to the actual source.  Last I counted I had something like 11 different textile science books.  Some are really deep dives, some more overviews, some have great comparison charts, some look at areas that I haven't found elsewhere.  And sometimes I like to check a few different resources to make sure they are on the same page.  Or maybe the knowledge has grown and there is more up-to-date information than what was available in the late 1900s (yes, some of my books original printing dates are from then - and I love them!)

But watching the program on Potter, I was reminded how lengthy and rich our history is - all of it.  And there are lessons to be learned, people to recognize for their contributions to that history.

Above all, keep learning, keep adding to your foundation of knowledge.  And remembering that we stand on the shoulders of giants, every one of us.