A sheep named Rose is shorn, and she shakes off the trauma and returns to the barnyard, where her friend John rubs her skin. His hands come back to him smeared with grease, Rose’s waterproofing grease, her own precious Lanolin.

Her wool-nobody has time to wash and card and spin it in Rosedale these days- is stuffed into a green garbage bag, left in the barn.

Years later, Rose the sheep is dead and burried under the new willow in the back field, but her wool remains in the green back where John, grown and returned, finds it and brings it upstairs to where he lives in the loft above the barn with his wife Hilde, and he shows her the wool, and remembers to her the story of rubbing his greasy friend Rose, his hands smelling for a week afterwards.

The wool has a barn smell now, overtop of the Lanolin smell. Hilde uses it to winterproof their little house, and there is so much of the wool left that she decides to learn woolcraft, and wonders if she can take off the barn smell but keep the smell of Lanolin, Lanolin, which she learns will be what protects her nipples all through feeding the baby that grows inside her, Lanolin, ancient and best nipple protector. Hilde daydreams that Rose is still alive, and she can just go downstairs and find Rose in the barn in the spring, and rub her wool, then rub the nipples to keep them from cracking. 

As Hilde learns in a washtub how to coax the thick coating of Lanolin off raw wool, John buys her a new pair of granny-knit mittens. After Hilde dries her hands she coats them in Rose-scented hand cream. She rides her bike around Rosedale in the mitts, and when she has worked up some heat, she lifts the mitts to her nose: Lanolin, Rose, Lanolin, Rose, Lanolin, Rose.