Leigh's Fiber Journal: Angora

Showing posts with label Angora. Show all posts

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Bowmont Fleece 6 - The Yarn

By Leigh

Today I am pleased to say that I have finished spinning my Bowmont fleece. The pictures are small, but for some reason I couldn't get my scanner to cooperate and give me a better close up.

I managed two different yarns from my sample: a pure Bowmont yarn and a Bowmont/Angora blend.

This first skein is the straight Bowmont. My singles measured 66 WPI and the 2-ply is 32 WPI. This is amazing for me, and as I spun it I was reminded why I don't usually spin a fine yarn; it takes a long time!

My goal was to get as much yardage as I could, and I ended up with approximately 258 yards. The yarn is quite elastic; I can stretch a 5 inch strand out to 7 inches.

Next I turned my attention to the broken tips I had combed out. These were mixed up with some neps, which I didn't bother to pick out. I figured I would full the yarn and that hopefully this would keep pilling to a minimum. I handcarded the 5 grams of "waste" Bowmont with angora rabbit, using my cotton handcarders.

A basket of Bowmont & Angora blend rolags.

My rolags looked like punis, don't they? But my fiber length for this skein was about 1 inch. These were spun long draw.

The blend is about 2/3 Bowmont to 1/3 Angora and it has a lovely hand. I abused the yarn to full it, just like I showed you in this post. The finished yarn is slightly bumpy and measures 26 WPI. I have 43+ yards.

I haven't had time yet to knit swatches of either yarn. I'm not even sure what size needles to use for yarn this fine! Not sure I will get this done over the long holiday weekend anyway. Not sure I'll get anything done. But I hope everybody has a lovely weekend and a safe one.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Angora Rabbit 5 - A Few Handspun Yarns

By Leigh

I reckon all that's left is to show you a few of my favorite handspun Angora yarns. Cathy asked in the comments about the halo and potential shedding of abused Angora, in garments. Sadly, the only knitted project I actually have from my Angora is a blend which I made before I knew about abusing the yarn.

That would be these yarns:

I had an unusually soft Jacob fleece which I separated by color and hand carded 50/50 with my Angora. The Angora was dyed with one of the Cushings blues for the gray parts and KoolAid Black Cherry for the dark parts. The white Jacob was blended with undyed white Angora. All these singles were then plied with Merino singles from commercially dyed tops.

When I ran out of Jacob, the rest of the blue was eventually blended with white Angora; hand teasing them together. The yarn below was spun out of hand with that.

After I took a class in spinning curly mohair at SAFF one year, I experimented with trying to spin a textured Angora yarn with the same technique.

I think it was visually successful, but since this was only a small sample, I'm not sure how it would knit up and wear.

But here's my favorite:

50/50 blend of grey Angora & white kid mohair.

This is a handcarded 50/50 blend of grey Angora and white kid mohair. Gorgeous! Between the color of the Angora and the luster of the kid mohair, it makes me think of polished sterling silver. On the 'someday' list in my mind, I will spin enough of this blend for a fancy cardigan.

Even though I have pounds of Angora fiber, I haven't done a lot with it. I admit that even though I am a project person by nature, rather than a sampler, I still tend to dabble and then move on to something new. Oh, I'm good at making plans, but too often life simply gets in the way and the plans and projects get postponed.

Of course, before my children left for university and were at home all the time, family was my priority. In those days, my fiber and textile pursuits were a way to treat myself after a day's work well done. I would spin or knit in the evening while as a family we read out loud. Our repeated favorites included the Little House on the Praire series, Ralph Moody's books, Sterling North's Rascal, and Watership Down. I admit that there wasn't a lot of time for weaving, which is probably why I still see myself as a novice weaver after 7 years. Even so, all those odd moments of relaxation yielded a lot of yarn, a lot of knitting, and a slow but steady amount of weaving.

Oddly, now that I have so much more time to myself I don't feel any more productive. Part of the problem I'm realizing is that I'm having a difficult time making the mental transition between fibers and textiles as relxation, and fibers and textiles as work. I enjoy weaving / spinning / knitting / dyeing so much that I have a hard time thinking of them as being productive. I often feel a little guilty throughout the day because I feel like I'm treating myself when I ought to be working instead! So my challenge for myself is to overcome this idea. I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but it's something I want to work on.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Angora Rabbit 4 - Finishing the Yarn

By Leigh

One of the charming characteristics of Angora yarn is its tendency to “bloom.” No sooner is one's yarn finished than the fine, smooth fibers begin unspin and work their way out of the yarn. In the process, they create a soft fluff about the yarn known as “halo.” However, this also means that the fibers work their way out of the yarn completely and shed all over the place!

The more loosely spun the yarn is, as in this close-up of one of my first angora yarns (from Cricket) on the left, the more the yarn blooms and the easier it sheds. The halo is also developed as the yarn is handled or the garment is worn. Spinning a firmer yarn helps, but doesn't stop this.

This is true not only of 100% Angora yarns but of blends, such as the sleeve of this Angora / Jacob / Merino blend sweater (below), as well.

Halo on a handspun, handknit sweater sleeve.

While many people love the soft halo effect, most folks don't like the shedding. The way to prevent this is to abuse the yarn. Sounds terrible, I know, but that's what they call it! Perhaps “wash and whack” would be a better way to say it.

The idea here is to take advantage of Angora's excellent felting quality by fulling the yarn in two steps.

Firstly in the washing. All that is required is warm water, a squirt of Dawn dishwashing liquid (or whatever you like to wash wool in), and a rough hand: squeeze the yarn vigorously.

In her video, Spinning Exotic Fibers & Novelty Yarns, Judith MacKenzie McCuin recommends using 2 pans of water, one hot and the other very cold. She works the yarn back and forth between the two, further shocking the fibers into felting.

Rinse thoroughly and squeeze as much water out as possible. I like to squeeze it in a towel.

The second step is the whacking:

Catzee snoopervising the brisk whacking of the yarn.

Hold the damp skein tightly in one hand and whack it firmly against a hard surface like a counter top. Whack hard! And loud! A bunch of times. Like cracking a whip. No wimpy whacking allowed. Then rotate the yarn and whack some more.

This step was not easy to get a picture of. I couldn't coordinate the whack, flash, and aperture opening(!) As you can see, Catzee was plainly curious. She would run off with every whack, but couldn't stay away for long as she just had to see what was going on.

After whacking I lay it loosely on a towel to dry. This textured yarn was spun from Rudy, using the "out of hand" spinning technique.

Next - a mini-gallery of some of my handspun Angora yarns.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Angora Rabbit 3 - Spinning the Fiber

By Leigh

Angora is considered a challenge to spin. It is slippery, flyaway, and sticks to everything. That is why it is often blended with wool, especially when first learning to spin it. It is a scrumptious addition to any fiber, though I would consider it a waste with something too coarse.

If you are spinning it for the first time, a fairly fine wool is a good choice to blend it with. The best choice is something which is the same length as the Angora you are working with, as longer fibers tend to be pull out first during the drafting process, leaving the shorter fibers to be spun at the end of the rolag or batt.

I've never woolcombed Angora, but for carding, fine carders like cotton carders or the finest carding cloth available for your drum carder works best (at least 125 tines per inch) works best.

Fricke Petite drum carder with brush attachment.

I also purchased a brush attachment for my drumcarder, a Fricke (now Strauch) Petite, as it helps keep the flyaway fibers under control.

Sharon mentioned experimenting with blending angora, and I did a lot of that too. I always found that my biggest difficulty was in getting an evenness of blend throughout the entire sample. For me, that meant weighing out the two fibers I wanted to blend, splitting and mixing up the batts, and running them through the drum carder for about 4 or 5 passes.

When it comes to spinning straight Angora, I don't do any of this. As in most things, I like to take the simplest approach. For me, that means simply spinning it by the handful, just as it is.

Teasing the Angora fibers to separate them for spinning.

First I "tease" the fibers by gently pulling them apart by hand. No clumps in the fiber should mean no lumps in the yarn!

A towel in my lap is always essential to keep the stray fibers off of my clothes. I've heard that silk is the best for this, but mostly I just use an old towel.

Like everything else, this takes practice, but once you get the hang of it, it is easy to draft from the mass of fibers. I usually use a large whorl and treadle slowly to keep the greatest amount of control. If I've teased it well and there are no short bits or VM, then it drafts well into a smooth, even single.

Drafting from a dryer sheet helps control flyaway fibers.

Kathy mentioned putting Angora in the freezer to help tame the flyawayness. I've never tried this, but of course, I don't have the luxury of a large freezer! I do find that dryer sheets work wonders for flyaway Angora fibers. It works to hold the web of fibers within a dryer sheet and draft out from that. I always kept dryer sheets around when I groomed and clipped my bunnies too. In fact, I would start by rubbing them down with one! Just rubbing my hands with a dryer sheet helps any time I'm handling the fluffy stuff.

One of the biggest challenges to spinning a 100% Angora yarn is the fact that it is so smooth and slippery. This has to do with the structure of the individual fibers. Sheep wool is easier to spin because the fibers are covered with microscopic scales (kind of like a snake's skin) called cuticle scales. These grab onto one another during the spinning process so that the fibers "stick" together to create the yarn.

The cuticle scales of Angora are smaller, smoother, and fewer in number than sheep's wool. On the one hand, this accounts for the superior softness of Angora, but on the other hand, it also accounts for it's tendency to unspin itself and shed from the yarn or garment. The soft "halo" effect which develops ("blooms") with handling, is a lovely, characteristic feature of Angora, but the shedding is not. The spinner can do two things to help counteract this, the first is by adding lots of twist. The tight twist will help trap the slippery fibers in the yarn.

Allowing the singles to twist back on themselves to check the yarn.

The second thing has to do with the treatment of the yarn after spinning, which I'll have to put into another post.

Before I close though, I do want to respond to Valerie's comment that I spoke of my bunnies in the past tense. Sadly this is true. One by one they crossed the Rainbow Bridge, except for Miss Ivy. When we moved into smaller quarters in the city I found a country home for her with another spinner, where I felt she could be happier.

It's hard to not think of myself as a "Bunny Mom" anymore. I think that's one of the reasons why I chose what I did for my logo:

This is a caricature sketch of Rudy done by my daughter about 7 years ago. It's always been close to my heart, just like Rudy was.

Next - Technique for finishing handspun Angora yarn.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Angora Rabbit 2 - The Fiber

By Leigh

Having four Angora rabbits gave me the opportunity to experiment with the different types of raw fiber. The wool can be bought commercially in either the raw form (right off the bunny) or as prepared tops. Raw Angora fiber is usually available in two forms: plucked or clipped. Which is better depends upon whom you ask.

As you can see in the photo on the left, plucked angora is nice and neat.Plucking is the easiest way to sort the fibers by quality and length. It is also the most time consuming method of harvesting angora, and not all bunnies like it. It is the most expensive form of raw Angora to buy (or the most profitable to sell.)

In the beginning I tried plucking, but since I wasn't interested in trying to sell my Angora, and because my bunnies didn't like being plucked, I settled on a combination of combing and clipping my Angoras instead.

I would always start by combing out all the loose fibers. Combed Angora can be semi-orderly.

I found that if I was careful I could keep the combed fibers parallel and neat. For the most part however, I didn't worry about neatness.

Clipping is fastest way to get all the fiber off the rabbit, so that is usually what I did. After I had combed out as much loose fiber as possible, I would clip the rest.

The biggest disadvantage to clipping is second cuts and matts, which are cut along with the good, spinnable fiber. Some believe that the blunt cut ends sacrifice some of the softness of the yarn, I can't say that I ever noticed a difference.

Since my Angora was mostly for personal use, I did not make any attempt to sort and grade it. I kept combings separate from clippings and discarded anything that was soiled, matted, or too short.

Angora fibers are exceptionally fine, measuring 13 microns or less in diameter. While the down fibers are crimpy, they are much smoother than other types of wool. It is this smoothness which accounts for both its softness and difficulty to spin.

Of the two types of Angoras I had, French and English, the French wool contained the most amount of guard hair. The guard hair is straighter than the down, but not stiff like guard hair in other types of fiber animals. Angora guard hair is not removed before spinning.

Next - spinning Angora fiber.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Angora Rabbit 1 - My Bunnies

By Leigh

In my last spinning post, Charleen asked about my comment on spinning angora. Having kept angora rabbits for about 6 years and having collected a seemingly lifetime supply of angora fiber from those rabbits, I thought I'd tell you the method I eventually came to use.

When I first learned to spin I never considered angora. What I really wanted was sheep. Unfortunately, we didn't live on a farm and didn't expect to any time soon, so DH agreed to give rabbits a try. I started with just one (doesn't it always work that way ;) , but over the years was given three more.

Rudy was my first.

Rudy was a Ruby-eyed White French Angora. This is what albino angoras are called.

He and Rascal were about the same age and got along very well together.

A curious thing about the Ruby-eyed Whites is that evidently they can't see very well. When Rudy would look at you, he would stare while slowly weaving his head back and forth. One theory is that they move their head in an attempt to focus on whatever they're trying to see.

Rudy would have loved to have been a house rabbit. He loved to sit on my lap and be petted. He loved to follow me wherever I went, constantly nudging me and hopping circles around me.

He also loved to explore. And chew. At our house, 'my rabbit ate my homework' was a valid excuse. However, the very thing I got him for was the very thing that kept him in an outdoor hutch; his fluff. Actually this wasn't so bad. We didn't have air conditioning and angoras suffer more from the heat than from the cold. So he was more comfortable out of doors.

Cricket was later given to me by a breeder who needed to find a home for her.

She was a gorgeous French Angora Agouti, who had been been a successful show bunny. She didn't get along with Rascal as well as Rudy did. In fact, she didn't like Rascal at all. He would have been happy to make friends, but the first time she saw him she started grunting loudly and charged him. He kept his distance after that. Of course, she lived in an outdoor hutch and only came in for grooming and clipping.

My last two bunnies were English Angoras. Smaller than the French Angoras, the English have long fiber on their faces and ears, making them a little harder to care for. Having less guard hair than the French, their wool is considered to be softer and finer. But that also meant that it matted more easily.

This is Miss Ivy. She was given to me along with a small grey buck we named Tibber. They were given to me one winter by a couple who had wanted to raise meat rabbits and had somehow gotten ahold of them. They were matted from nose to tail when I first got them. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of Tibber, which I really regret because he had the sweetest, most loving personality of all my rabbits. Miss Ivy and Tibber both lived outside too. I kept this small hutch available for safety whenever they were in the house for awhile.

Oh dear. I'm afraid I've spent more time reminiscing about my bunnies that talking about spinning angora. My apologies! Next ...... All about Angora fiber.

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