The ringing of phones at Australia's last big commercial wool spinner sounded the alarm late last March.
Then the online orders started flooding in.
Bendigo Woollen Mills in Victoria, the last of its kind, had somehow survived a Tsunami of cheap imports but like almost everyone else when coronavirus arrived, was considering closing its doors and sending staff home to ride it out.
Today it is one of the bigger success stories of the pandemic.
"We didn't see it coming, until those phones started ringing," the mill's national sales manager Wayne McMahon said.
People in lockdown had quickly turned to some almost forgotten crafts like knitting to relieve their boredom.
They were surprised and happy to find an Australian business was still available.
Bendigo Woollen Mills sold five year's worth of product in four months.
They still can't keep up.
Staff worked through their Easter holidays, extra shifts were organised until the little factory was humming around the clock.
Orders came in from around the country - Queensland, NSW, WA, South Australia and Victoria plus also New Zealand.
The mail-room at the mill is still weeks behind.
Retailers opened their stores again starting with click and collect.
The mill employs almost 100 people between Bendigo and Wangaratta and are still going flat out today in the supposed "off" season, trying to build up stock for the proper season - winter.
Those people who took up the knitting needles and the crochet hooks haven't put them down yet.
They are becoming better skilled and more creative, wanting more challenging patterns and projects - and more wool.
Australia used to be home to hundreds of spinning mills like Bendigo, in a time when scouring was done locally.
Today the world's biggest woolgrowing nation has to send their product offshore for scouring, to China.
Cheap imports from places like China, India and Turkey put the Aussie mills out of action, all accept Bendigo which kept its niche business.
A takeover of the Australian Country Spinners at Wangaratta saw the Australian Yarn Company formed which now supplies 800 outlets in Australia and New Zealand.
Unfortunately Australia is not going to knit its way out of its wool woes.
Even at its super-charged best, Bendigo Woollen Mills only uses several hundred tonnes of wool a year.
Australian growers produce more than 300,000 tonnes each year.
A central NSW buyer takes his premium pick from regular Merino wool suppliers from the Riverina of NSW and Tasmania with microns ranging from a course 29 to superfine 16.
The factory needs a long staple, for the mill machines.
The wool is sent off to China for scouring and returns to Bendigo for grading, dyeing, spinning and sometimes blending.
Today the mill is belting through about 2600 kilograms of wool each day.
Over the 36 years the mill has been operation and under the ownership of Colin Walker, they have recognised spinning big volumes of wool is an art form.
They manage temperature, moisture and gently jockey the speed of the machines.
Keeping experienced hands is an important part of the equation, many of the staff have stayed with the mill for many years.
The mill had been survivor thanks for the mail-order business, publishing their own pattern books and operating a helpline for customers.
The business has seasons, although demand for whites and cream colours is year-round, for babies of course when you don't know what the gender will be.
And while on colours, different states have bigger demands for different colours, it all depends on their football teams.
And Victoria remains the best state for overall sales. It stays colder for longer, Mr McMahon says.
Mr McMahon believes the love of knitting had skipped a generation - his.
"Most people say their mothers used to do it and now we see their grandchildren are doing it.
"Knitting is cool again apparently."
He says wool is back in vogue as well and urged marketers to continue promoting its "naturalness" against environmentally unfriendly synthetics.
"Plus the wools today are a lot different from the school jumper we all used to have which itched so much," he said.
"Today's wool is nothing like that."
Mr McMahon has been in the wool spinning game for 30 years and has never seen anything like the current demand which he reckons will continue.
"They're hooked, we have lots of people who saying they started knitting during the lockdown and couldn't believe how relaxing it is."