Rosa Pomar
“This isall all hanging by a thread”: the lthe that covers us and the memmemoryof the earth, the voice of the landscape, and the narrative of shepherds, of hills, of mists woven into the fleece of the sheep. This isall all hanging by a thread –a storyastory without heirs entangled in thewool that brings with it the browns of the sun, the greens of the mountains, the graysof the stone. Rosa Pomar is the onewho unravels the thread in a slow process that is an act of resistanceanceanceis, a way of saying that value is notisin in what is new and shiny, but in what is old, silent, and true, on a homenagem to pacieof the earth and to wisdom contained in the knowledge-know-howof.
Studied HistoryHistoryand has always enjoyed understanding how things things change. Among her strongest memoriesmemorieschildhoodâfrom myare the field trips to thebiscuit factory, the canning factory, tothe production lines that turn good things into other usefuluseful things. “Myúno longerseeanyto thefactories…”, he laments.
Rosa had the privilegeisto learn how to knitting and “all that stuff” in a familyawherewhere “the women were college-educated, emancipated, politically”. And she still emphasizes this today whenever shebecause even today there is a “prejudice and stigma associated with linking this type of knowledge to a domestic lifeisdomesticated domesticity”. “I learned these things without that stigma.”
As as thingsgrew up, the world changed rapidly,the forestsisbegan tobeganto be imported. I wanted to sell knitwearand and realized there were no Portuguese yarns. In thefactories, people would pat her on the backand said:“The girl has some bit…” They thought she was “crazy”, they tried to convinceherher to work with wool from othercountriescountries – since ours was no good, whichwool from Portuguese sheep is prickly. “Thewool accounts for less than one percent of the fiberstextileused in the textile industryu. Synthetic materialssyntheticaccount for 50 percent. There’s still this absurd notion of throwing away the only meatiswe haveraw textilewebebe self-sufficientsufficient,so we can go around wearing,, which ends up in the Atacama Desert…”
It was the firstperson to annoy half the world with this wholenational from animals raised on extensive farms, forcing us to learn the 16 raofautoportuguese(one, two, fours: say: say lthere’s another time: Badana, Bordaleira, Campaniça, Churra, Merina, Mondegueira, Saloia, Sardinheira…), notignore that “the catst" of the region is the aging of the population and the depopulation of the territoryó.
“The catástrophe is what ishappening happening. Many of thesesurvivesurvive because you have half ayouof shepherds in their 70s who don’t know how to live any other way and wholovelove forthose animals. But their children are in a differentplace…”
““Theactivist”, Rosa Pomar takes another problem “veryveryserious” that is the inevitableclosure of the lastlast public washhouse and which threatens the survivalofof thein in the regionthe. “We are in the process of,for the first time in historyó,”, we no longer have the autonomy to process wool. If now more than half of ourwool stays in the countryside, 100 percent will stay in the. The farmers from whom we buy tprofitprofit from their wool, therestsincur expenses. Until we have measures that stimulate andthemapositive discrimination in favor of wool,will demand not increase. We have a vicious cycle of devaluation of the rawisraw. This isall all hanging by a thread…,” she concludes. “It’s very likelythatthat within 20 years, many of these breedsbreedswillwill exist in germplasm banks...”
Thecurrent year of 2025 was the time to go out and see in perspectiveperspective. In Japan, Rosa had proof that the past does notis is mem,, but a present gesture, which the rústic, the melanchóand the imperfect (wabi-sabi) thaveplace in our lives, that from Portuguese sheep could very well be the kintsugi, a golden scar that repairs ancient porcelain. “Within the niche of people who knitthere a niche of people who like to knit with yarns they know areare made oforganicoror that are linked to cultural heritageofof a particular countryí. And the“The Japanese like our threads,”, says the founder of Retrosaria.
In Morocco, as part of the Talleres Nomadas, she went back in time, carded and spun wool alongside Berber women, and stroked zanafirugs, tasted freshly made butter, and immersed herself in thetorsugar, photographed people dressed in the colors of the doors and the wooden doors on the verge of extinction, the thousand and one lozenges and the innumunpatterns of hydro.
“Slow down,”, he argues. Valuing the local , theslow processes, and handmade craftsmanship. “We mustreturn to dressing our landscape.” To be theactivelies in the simple choices of everyday. Dress itPortuguese . Not letting the thread break.
