Finally Finished the Mohair!

Remember that mohair I've been spinning? I've finally finished it! I started from raw fleece. You can read about how I processed the mohair in Processing Raw Mohair by Hand and Mohair Update. In the end I spun 0.8 of a mile of pure mohair yarn. It was hard work. Here are the eight completed skeins:

 That's me and goats done for a bit!

Processing raw mohair by hand

An angora goat and her kid

At the moment I am busy processing some mohair.  Mohair is the fibre which comes from the angora goat.  This can be confusing since there are angora rabbits and angora goats, the fibre from angora rabbits is referred to as angora whereas the fibre produced by angora goats is known as mohair.  

I saw the flock of goats shorn and I picked what I considered to be the best kid fleeces.  By kid I mean the goats were about a year old and this was their first shearing, they weren’t tiny kids but this will be the best fleece of their lives.  I need to produce about 800g of finished yarn for the owner of the goats.  This is a massive job.  I don’t know of any easy way of preparing mohair fibre.

The raw mohair

 First of all I washed the mohair with Unicorn Power Scour, it was very dirty and smelt terrible while wet!

Now the mohair is dry I am combing through one lock at a time with a pet brush.  The locks open up easily except at the butt end, the end where the fibre was shorn from the goat.  The underside of the fleeces are heavily matted and in places scurfy. 

I don’t know much about this scurf, I’ve heard various explanations, some people say it is hardened wax but I think it is dry skin, a kind of goat dandruff.  It doesn’t dissolve in water which I would expect it to if it was grease.  It is gritty in texture.  I have heard that dry skin is a breeding fault or a lack of oil in the diet, who knows.  All I know is I have my work cut out producing 800g of ready to spin mohair!  I must say, despite the scurf, the fibre is beautiful, soft and luminous.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Have you ever worked with raw mohair?  How did you prepare the fibre for spinning?  

The dog is done!

Great news, I have completed the commission to spin the dog fur!  To recap, the fur came from Alaska, a rescue dog who is believed to be half Malamute.  The task was to spin the fur pure.  It has been a long haul, the fur was very short and slippery, but I can report I have finished the job.  I have spun nearly half a mile of pure dog fur.

Here is the result:

 This is what nearly half a mile of spun dog fur looks like!

Spinning Dog Fur

I have a new challenge.  Has anyone out there worked with dog fur?  I have taken on a commission to spin some husky fur, this is not something I have tried before. 

I met the gorgeous Alaska last week.  Alaska was born in Battersea Dog's Home.  Luckily for Alaska, he was soon homed and now a few years later (it would be rude to reveal a gentleman's age) Alaska would like to give his human a present made from his fur.  Alaska's mum was allegedly a Malamute and his father is unknown.  Whatever the father was, he must have needed a step ladder.  I was expecting a great big scary wolf but the fellow who arrived at my door was about the size of a sheltie and extremely cute. 

Alaska has a double layered coat, the outer coat ranges from white through shades of grey to black, the fibres are quite long, straight and on the coarse side.  The undercoat is soft and fine, mostly white in colour and rather short.  The fur I have been given to spin is brushed out undercoat which Alaska has naturally shed, this means at the end of each hair there should be a small nodule, the root.  Fur which has been cut off the animal does not have this nodule.  Hair which retains the root is easier to spin as the nobbly bits help to hold the fibres together.

Wool fibres from sheep are a natural velcro, the fibres are barbed and will cling to each other, making spinning easy.  Hair fibres on the other hand are smooth and require coaxing to stay together.  Hair fibres, such as alpaca, mohair and angora, are often blended with wool, the wool locking the more slippery fibres into the yarn.  In this case, Alaska doesn't want his fur hobnobbing with any other animal's fibre so the challenge is to spin a pure dog yarn.       

As the fur is very short, I will need to use the long draw technique (explained in the post 'How does spinning work?').  The end result will then be a fluffy yarn with a halo effect.  I just hope I can produce a yarn which holds together and doesn't fly apart!  The next decision is whether or not to wash the fibre before spinning.  Any ideas?  The fibre doesn't smell too much but it does have a smell and I'm sure no one, however much they love their pet, wants to walk around smelling like a dog - sorry Alaska.  I do remember an article in the Reader's Digest many years ago about someone who had a tame wolf.  They spun the wolf's fur and made a jumper.  Whenever they went out wearing the jumper, other dogs either attacked them or ran away wimpering in terror.  

I'm worried that if I spin the fibre in it's raw state I may not be able to wash the finished yarn enough without damaging it to get rid of the smell.  On the other hand, the fibre may become matted during washing.   I think I am going to test wash a small amount of fibre and see what happens.  I have the very good Unicorn Power Scour which fellow ravelrers (is that the right word?)assure me removes the rather potent whiff of ram.  Anything which can clean a year's dirt and and grease from a sheep's fleece should be up to cleaning dog fur, after all, Alaska changes his underclothes regulary so his fur can't be anything like as bad as a fleece.     

Before he left, Alaska gave me his paw and we shook on the deal.  There's no going back now.  I will be recording my progress here so do return and find out how the washing and spinning goes!