Produced by
Patti Moreno
Contributor to:
My Woolly Mammoth Fiber is in!
What you are about to witness is slightly embarrassing. It shows that I am-- as one of you has called me-- a Fiber nerd. This video simply shows my unrestrained glee when I open a box of my own pygora fiber back from the mini mill.
For those of you, who don’t spin or are beginners, let me explain.
As you know I work with angora fiber which is the fur from my angora rabbits. I also have a pygora goat and I work with that hair as well. I have mentioned that pygora fiber has guard hairs which need to be removed. You may have imagined me with tweezers removing the small hairs from my pygora fiber but actually it’s a bit more complicated than that.
For Pygora fiber the de-hairing process has to be professionally done at a mini-mill. Since I shear my pygora goats twice a year, at the end of the second shearing I am able to send about ten pounds of hair to the mini mill where it will be washed, de-haired, blended with other fibers (at my request) and spun into yarn and returned to me, so that I can make something beautiful.
This batch that I sent has taken a long time to come back and when I see the result, as you see, I am more than excited. I’m in love.
ecause Pygora wool is so warm (7 times than that of wool) I asked the mini mill to add some silk and some Merino wool to make a softer lighter more user-friendly yarn. The result is…awesome. In addition to 200 yard skeins of wool I also have rovings so that I can hand spin some myself.
What I have here is 30%pygora, 20% silk and 50% Merino wool. I have two colors, a grey and a plum (my husband’s choice) and as you see, the yarn is shiny, silky, exotic and phenomenal.
As I mentioned, although it has been professionally processed, I find a tiny piece of hay in this luscious yarn. I will gingerly remove it and run to my tiny house and make something warm and wonderful, just for me!
