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Goats and Bunnies

© Suzanne Griffith

Natural fibers are a pleasure to work with, whether you're a spinner or a knitter. Each fiber has its own special quality ranging from cool and smooth cotton to warm and fuzzy angora. I talked about the most popular animal hair fiber, wool, last week in my article Something About Wool, but don't forget the wide variety of other animals who let us use their winter coats.

The angora dilemma: The goat gives us mohair, and the rabbit gives us angora. Both fibers are very warm for their weight. Go to Breeds of Livestock, and click on Angora in the left-hand column. You will see a photo of some handsome goats with long, curly hair. These are angora goats, but their hair is called mohair. The fiber called angora comes from the angora rabbit. So angora goat = mohair, and angora rabbit = angora. It took me years to figure that out! But if you look at this picture of an English angora bunny, you will see that it looks nothing like a goat at all. There are also French and German angora rabbits, and other breeds as well.

Both mohair and angora produce fuzzy or hairy yarn. Angora is usually lighter in weight and softer than mohair and has much shorter fibers. I have knit with both angora and mohair, and I've spun angora. When I started spinning it, the little rabbit fibers were getting loose and getting in my eyes and my nose, but a kind soul suggested spraying the fiber with water, and that completely solved the problem.

My personal preference is to see mohair and angora combined with wool. Angora and wool can only be described as dreamy - the yarn is usually fine and works well for baby hats, shawls, and terrific white berets. You'll see some elegant hand-dyed mohair-wool yarns in the yarn stores. The combination of fibers leads to dramatic textural effects as well as subtle color effects in the finished yarn - the mohair takes up the dye at a different rate than the wool. My first natural dyeing project was with onion skins. I saved yellow onion skins for two years and ended up with a little bag full. Fortunately, my friend with a big family saved hers, too, and together I had plenty for dying some wool and some mohair/wool. The wool turned out a dark gold, while the mohair/wool is a soft buff color, perfect for a scarf over my mauve-ish city raincoat. I made my first pair of gloves out of the wool, by the way, and I was terribly proud of them. One of them was last seen near St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague, Czech Republic; the other is upstairs in the dresser pining for its lost mate.

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