From the Times Daily, Florence, Alabama
December 8, 2002
By Cathy Wood Myers

Fresh from the farm
Scarves handmade in the Shoals hitting the big time

Even the people who make them don’t quite believe it; an upscale New York City department store sells scarves handmade in the Shoals for – drum roll, please – a whopping $450.
"I wouldn’t pay $30 for one myself," joked Erika Rosenberg, the Florence woman responsible for turning local alpaca hair into chic gotta-haves.
        "It’s hard to imagine that somebody in New York City bought something I made," said Susan Hope of Sheffield, who organized the knitters who made the scarves.
        But these are no ordinary high-fashion accessories. At a trendy 10-feet long, the alpaca scarves are luxuriously soft and stylishly elegant. It’s also hard to believe that they began on the backs of alpacas grazing in a muddy Shoals field.
        Rosenberg, a 47-year old mother of four teenagers, has 14 alpacas on her 55-acre farm near St. Florian. Ever since she and her family – her husband, John Reinke, is a cardiologist in Florence – moved here from Oregon nine years ago, she has been raising alpacas, spinning the fiber into yarn and giving away the resultant scarves and sweaters.
        "Then, I sort of realized I could do more," she said. "What cinched it is when (New York fashion designer and Florence resident) Billy Reed saw one of my afghans and said, "I can sell as many of these for thousands of dollars as you can make."
        Reed gave her the name of a buyer at Barneys in New York, but Rosenberg didn’t realize that there was a specific day for vendors to pitch their wares – a day when the line to see Barneys buyers sometimes stretches out to the street.
        "I didn’t know I was supposed to wait, so I called and they said, "Yeah, we want to see your scarves." My husband was going to a conference there, so I went with him. They had all these buyers and took pictures and loved the scarves and ordered 12 – all because I was so stupid. Had I known that I should have waited, I would still be stuck in line."
        Back home, she called Hope, who had been knitting for Rosenberg for a couple of years. Facing a two-week deadline, Hope organized several other knitters, including her own mother and got the order done.
        "We worked like crazy, but it was fun and we were real pleased," said Hope, who did three of the scarves herself. "When we heard that three sold as soon as they hit the floor, we were all like, "I hope one of them was mine!"
        Hope, 48 today, is a longtime knitter who learned from her English-born mother. A yarn sales representative, she knits and sells her own scarves, sweaters and hats as well as what she does for Rosenberg.
        "Erika and I work really well together. It’s completely different working with alpaca wool," Hope said. "Acrylic feels so plastic to me now. Erika’s yarn is so soft. All the knitters like working with it."
        Rosenberg’s quest for quality is evident. She’s dedicated to detail when it comes to her alpacas – from supervising the breeding for her herd to fertilizing and maintaining the pasture to using antique tools to spin the sheared hair into yarn.
        Other chores include 12-hour mowing marathons in the summer, feeding and checking on the herd (two hours a day), trimming toenails, every four or five months, and shearing the animals’ coats in the spring.
        Spinning the sheared hair into yarn takes a couple of days a week, two to six hours a day.
        On average, the alpacas demand at least 15 hours a week, depending on the time of year.
        "It’s such honest work, straight-forward and honest, working with your hands. You make it and there it is and it’s useful and attractive, and that’s just great," she said.
        She started her business-hobby almost 20 years ago, when her husband was in his last year of medical training in New Orleans.
        "We had no money, and I was home all the time," she said. "I had seen someone in San Francisco with an angora rabbit fur sweater selling for $800 and I thought, "Gosh, I can do that," "so I bought a spinning wheel with some of the rent money and taught myself to spin."
        She enjoyed it so much that later, when the family moved to Oregon, she bought angora rabbits and mohair and cashmere goats, found a knitter to turn her fiber into wearables, even selling some.
        After moving to Florence, she gave up the goats (too greasy) and the rabbits (too messy) and kept the alpacas.
        "Not too many people do it all like I do, all the different steps in the process. I was lucky because I always had animals, so I knew that part. I always had fiber, so I knew that part. Plus, my husband has a good job so I can actually sponge off of him and go to New York when I need to," Rosenberg added, half tongue-in-cheek.
        She hopes that Barneys will order more next month, although the 40-50 pounds of alpaca fiber she harvests a year are only enough for a couple of sweaters and a batch of scarves.
        "I don’t want more than 14 alpaca," she said, emphatically. "I do all my own shearing, and it’s hard work. I don’t want to do anymore, really."
        It’s that hard work that’s putting the Shoals on the fashion map, said local boutique owner and designer Marigail Mathis.
        Local T-shirt designer Natalie Chanin has made fashion news with her hand-embellished clothes, and Billy Reed was recently named best new men’s designer.
        "The Shoals is really a big hit," Mathis said. "We’re perceived as an upscale, glamorous area. People think we’re full of talent and that there’s such creativity here. Erika’s success shows what a great product she has, and we have some really hip people here who have helped her put that product together, such as David Sims (of Tomlinson-Sims Advertising in Florence).
        "I love seeing wonderful things happen to wonderful people," Mathis added.
        Rosenberg agrees that her time has come. "I’m always going to be doing this, and it’s always going to be good stuff," she said. "I needed those 20 years to learn how to do it and to get my kids going, and now, it’s all happening the way it’s supposed to."