If I buy yarn at a wool shop I choose the one where the sales people are friendly and pleased with having customers in the store and happy to share their experiences and knowledge of knitting and happy to hear of the customers experiences and knowledge of knitting.
This actually applies to most things I purchase. Life is so much nicer when meaning plays a major role.
I also treasure coming across wool at garage sales because that can offer a wealth of meaning. F’r’instance: today at a sale I came across a softball-sized ball of wool (fifty years ago I was pitcher on a ladies baseball team and even across that distance of time the memory of the size of the ball leapt to mind when I saw the ball of wool). The ball of wool was handspun and seemed an unusual fibre: sort of like puffs of wool being held by longer threads.
The woman selling saw me holding the ball and staring at it as only lovers of fibre do so she ambled over and said, "I think that’s musk ox."
Of course I had to get the story. I waited around until the man who would know more about it returned from putting up garage sale signs.
He confirmed that it was "highly likely" that this was the ball of wool spun from fur which a research scientist in Northern Ontario had gathered from the musk oxen he was studying (I did not think to wonder, until now, just how he gathered the fur!) and given to the former wife of the garage sale man; she had washed it ever so carefully in the bathtub and then had the dickens of a time spinning it so had combined it with other fibres but the garage sale man did not recall what they were; he did remember (and I did think to ask) that the scientist had wanted the wool knit into a vest for himself. Whether this happened or whether the ball I now so cheerfully possess is a leftover, I do not know. I may or may not knit it into something. For the moment it is enough to just sit in a basket and be admired and evoke the memory of its history!